


it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath

by leftbrainhipcheck



Category: Scott & Bailey
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:27:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 24,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29764452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftbrainhipcheck/pseuds/leftbrainhipcheck
Summary: Gill probably should have seen it coming, given who she was dealing with, but she’s still somehow surprised when Rachel shows up at her door, nearly midnight, in her cups, leaning against the doorframe in her leather jacket, looking entirely more alluring than any one person ought to have the right.“Hi, boss.”—A companion to season 4.  Rachel and Gill find their way toward one another, and toward something like healing.
Relationships: Rachel Bailey/Gill Murray
Comments: 27
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set through the whole of S4, covering roughly the period between, “You can crash my parties anytime, kid,” and, “I am so proud of you.” I wanted to be able to watch this season with my headcanon about these two intact, so here we are. 
> 
> Please bear in mind that I’m a hapless American, so I’ve almost certainly made a mess of my British-isms here or there. Hopefully all the sex and angst will help make up for it.

GILL

Gill hadn’t planned on taking time off. Maybe a day or so, but she felt alright, really, considering. Ready to move on. But Julie Dodson, who’d seemed awfully shaken herself, had insisted. “You nearly died, Gill. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you – take the time,” she’d said. They’d gone back and forth, Gill insisting on a few days, Julie on a month or more. She’d finally managed to bargain Julie down to three weeks, a length of time that hadn’t seemed so bad when she’d agreed to it, but felt effectively endless as soon as she’d bolted the door behind her.

The problem was, the memories were waiting for her in the silence. The horror of that day, Helen Bartlett’s boozy breath hot on her cheek, belted to the driver’s seat, dizzy with terror, sure that she would die, that she would never see Sammy again – it was unbearable. She was used to being able to think her way through things. She was good at her job. _Great_ at her job. But no matter how long she sat there, alone in her house, going over the events of that day, rethinking, re-strategizing, none of it mattered, did it? There was no plan of action that could undo any of it. Helen’s blood wouldn’t be talked back into her veins. The nightmares couldn’t be reasoned with. There was no way to make any of it right.

Julie called regularly to check in, and Janet had been a dream, stopping by every evening on her way home from work. Even Rachel had sent her a few texts: “Hanging in there, boss? We miss u.” When Gill started to think she would lose her mind if she had to spend another second in her house – on about evening number two – Janet picked her up and brought her to the pub. And again the next night. And the next. The others from the syndicate cycled in and out depending on their schedules, but she and Janet were there, night after night. And where Janet went, of course, so went Rachel. They’d fallen into a routine, then: Janet picking her up each evening; drinking together until Janet had to get home to the girls; Rachel dropping her home at the end of the night.

It started… well, it was hard to remember exactly how it started. She’d had a long day – memories threatening to overtake her, a session with her useless prat of a counsellor that had left her feeling misunderstood and alone – and so she’d let things go a bit too far, had more to drink than usual. She and Rachel were gathering up their things to leave, god-knows-what-time in the morning (Rachel would stay all night if Gill didn’t insist on leaving) and Rachel was telling her about a date she’d had recently.

“I told our Alison, never again, that is _it_ , it’s a permanent ban on setting me up,” she’d said. “He tried to order for me, which, like, _what_? I mean, what _year_ is it? But then – you won’t believe me, boss, but I swear he leans over, and he takes my hand—” And as they stepped out onto the pavement, she took Gill’s hand in hers. “And he says, ‘Oh, love, it’s my pleasure,’ in this _voice_ , right?” Gill had laughed, as much at Rachel’s story as the telling of it, and Rachel had grinned, looking pleased at the attention. “So he has my hand and he brings it up, and I’m thinkin’ – listen, bloke, you really have no idea how close you are to being smacked about by a member of the Manchester Metropolitan Police – and then he goes…” Rachel lifted Gill’s hand to her lips, then, and kissed it. As she did, she glanced up, meeting Gill’s eye from behind those long lashes, and the look was filled with such unexpected, naked desire that Gill’s laughter died in her throat. 

She should have stopped it then. If she hadn’t had so much to drink, she would have. But she was pissed, and suddenly Rachel was looking at her with that _hunger_ , and instead of pulling her hand away, Gill thought, through the fog, _This will never happen again. If this door closes it will close forever._

So when Rachel took a step toward her, Gill didn’t say what she should have said: _It’s getting late_ , or _We should be going_ , or even, _Rachel, I want to, but I can’t_. When Rachel held her gaze for a beat too long, asking her a silent question, Gill’s heart pounded, but her stare didn’t waver. And when Rachel – brave, decisive, impulsive Rachel – intertwined her fingers in Gill’s own and led her around the side of the pub, into the shadows, Gill didn’t hesitate.

Of course, she’d thought about it before. Rachel was an immature pain in the arse, yes, but she was also clever, and beautiful, and she’d seemed to be half in love with Gill from the day she’d started on the syndicate. “ _Watch out for that one, she’s coming for you_ ,” Julie had said, laughing, after overhearing a conversation between the two of them once. But Gill had scoffed, waved it away. “ _Oh, they’re all like that in the beginning. I was the same way.”_

“ _Yeah. Like I said_ ,” Julie had replied.

Rachel was so tentative at first, there in the darkness. Nuzzling into Gill’s neck, breath shaking, hands just grazing her hips. Finally, when Gill thought she couldn’t stand another second, Rachel’s lips barely brushing her own, Rachel whispered, “Can I?” 

The moment Gill nodded Rachel lost all hesitation, her mouth hot on Gill’s own, her tongue, her hands in Gill’s hair, under Gill’s shirt, body pressing Gill’s into the wall, and Gill was dizzy, her need a throbbing ache in her abdomen, her hands on Rachel’s skin, skin like fire. 

_Pay attention_ , Gill thought. _This will never happen again._

*****

She skips the pub the next night. Tells Janet she needs a night off. She hadn’t been daft enough to invite Rachel home with her, but she’d _wanted_ to, and that was bad enough. In the clear, sober light of day, she can see the eleven thousand different ways it had been a mistake.

A very, very enjoyable mistake, but still. A mistake that was going to cause endless headaches at work. How many times – how many _times_ – had she told Rachel off for letting her ridiculous personal life interfere with the job? 

_Christ_ , _now I_ am _that ridiculous personal life_.

She spends the day trying not to think about it. Starts in on the wine early.

And then – well, she probably should have seen it coming, given who she was dealing with, but she’s still somehow surprised when Rachel shows up at her door, nearly midnight, in her cups, leaning against the doorframe in her leather jacket _,_ looking entirely more alluring than any one person ought to have the right.

“Hi, boss.”

 _Fuck_. Gill takes a fortifying breath and reaches for that acidic, hyper-professional tone, the one she uses when she wants to scare people at work. “What are you doing here, Rachel?”

“You weren’t at the pub tonight.”

“No.” She raises her eyebrows. _And?_

Rachel shrugs. “I dunno. I thought I’d check up on ya. Thought you might want… company.”

The way she says it, the look she gives her – Gill swallows.

_You are her boss._

She keeps her voice clipped. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Rachel bites the inside of her cheek. She picks at a bit of peeling paint on the doorframe. “I didn’t mean – I just thought we could have some wine or something.”

“It’s late. I’m going to bed.”

Rachel meets her eye. “I could come with you.”

“ _Rachel_.”

“It was just a suggestion!” she says quickly, breaking into that grin of hers, all dimples and joy. “I’d settle for the wine.”

_You absolutely cannot do this._

“You’re drunk.”

“A bit, yeah,” Rachel agrees cheerfully. “You?”

“A bit.”

Gill stares at her for several seconds, trying to remind herself of the eleven thousand reasons she should send her away. They suddenly seem so small compared to the memory of Rachel’s hands, her mouth, the sounds she made in the darkness.

She shakes her head, slowly, as Rachel raises her eyebrows. Another silent question.

And then she moves aside, inviting her in, as she knew she would from the moment she opened the door.

_You are an idiot, Gill Murray._

She pours two glasses of wine. Hands one to Rachel and sits down on the settee. Rachel shrugs off her jacket and settles next to her, kicking off her boots and tucking her feet underneath her. She turns to face Gill.

“What now, boss?” she asks, smirking.

Gill wonders at how easily this girl has managed to unsettle her. How easily she has taken on the role of aggressor, after so many years of following Gill around, making eyes at her. Julie’s words ring through her head. _Watch out for that one._

 _You are her boss,_ she thinks again, distantly, but she knows she’s well past talking herself out of this. Something had changed the moment Rachel lifted Gill’s hand to her lips last night, meeting her eye with that look of undisguised need.

 _Well_ , she thinks, head spinning a bit from the wine, the proximity to Rachel _. May as well hang for a sheep as a lamb._

She puts down her glass and plucks Rachel’s from her hand. “Come here,” she says then, hooking a finger into Rachel’s collar and bringing her close. Rachel groans as their lips come together. She climbs on top of Gill, straddling her, and Gill marvels at how easy it is, how straightforward and uncomplicated it is after all to do this. To kiss her, to run her hands under her shirt, sliding up her skin, feeling her shiver. To slip under her bra, grazing her nipple with a thumb. Rachel groans again, louder, and her hips start to rock.

“Mmm,” says Gill. “Don’t move.”

“Don’t—?”

Damned if Gill’s going to let her keep dictating the course of this thing. 

Gill kisses her again, running her hands along the inside of her thighs, firm, thumbs pressing into the muscle. She can feel Rachel shaking, hear the hitch in her breathing as she slides her hands, teasing closer and closer. Slowly, she shifts, begins unbuttoning Rachel’s trousers, savouring the little whimpers Rachel makes as each button gives way. Then she slides her hand in, under her knickers, and Rachel groans, “ _Oh, fuckfuckfuck,”_ as Gill presses one finger into her wetness. She begins to roll her hips again.

Gill stops. Moves her hand away.

“What did I tell you?”

Rachel is panting. “What?”

“I said don’t move.”

Slowly, she slides her hand back into place, drawing another long moan from Rachel. She uses her fingertips, gently, moving forward and back, and Rachel is still for a moment – trembling, but still – but when Gill starts to circle her clit she groans, presses into Gill’s hand.

Gill moves away again, and Rachel gives a frustrated growl.

“I have to say, Detective Constable, I’m not particularly impressed with your ability to follow orders,” Gill says. “Are you going to listen to me, or should we call it a night?”

“No! No. I just – I can’t – Jesus, how am I supposed to stay still?”

“I don’t care. Figure it out,” Gill says indifferently, slipping her fingers over Rachel’s clit again.

Rachel moans something that sounds a lot like, “fffffuuuucckkkk,” but to her credit, she manages not to move. She takes a shaking breath, brings her forehead to Gill’s. “I might hate you right now, a bit,” she says, but there’s a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

“Already? We’ve just started.”

Gill keeps her touch light, teasing – intentionally, maddeningly light. Rachel breathes deeply, eyes closed, but soon she opens them again. “God, that feels amazing,” she whispers. “Will you – fuck me harder?” 

Gill shakes her head no, slowly, and the muscles in Rachel’s jaw flex. 

“But – I won’t move.”

Gill doesn’t respond, but she keeps her hand steady.

Rachel breathes out, shaking. She gives Gill a sweet smile. “Please?”

“I’ve said no,” Gill says, and she has to fight to keep her touch light as Rachel groans, gets even wetter, the realization washing over her, as she finally understands exactly how this is going to happen, and on whose terms. Soon she begins to beg – _“Fuck, Gill – please_ ,” pleading in a whisper at first, but growing more and more insistent. “No,” Gill says simply each time – and each time Rachel moves, Gill pulls her hand away, eliciting another frustrated moan, setting off another round of begging. They stay that way, forehead to forehead, Rachel trembling, gasping, “ _Please_ —” but Gill gives the same answer every time, voice light, taking pleasure in it: “No.”

When the register of Rachel’s voice begins to drop, when her hands twine into Gill’s hair, urgent, scrabbling, Gill shifts the angle of her hand. “Don’t move,” she warns again, voice stern as she slides two fingers deep inside Rachel, curling them, keeping her palm pressed against her clit, moving in and out, and Rachel’s breaths come like sobs, “ _Ohhh, fuck, fuck, fuck_ ,” but she tries, still, she still tries so hard not to move. Neither of them looks away, and Gill can feel Rachel’s body tensing, coiling, her muscles quaking; she holds her there, on the edge, making it last, knowing that she’d be content to hear Rachel groaning “ _yes, oh, fuck,_ ” into her ear for the rest of her life.

But eventually the temptation is too much – she has to know what it’s like to see Rachel come. So when she can’t stand it for a second longer she pulls back and begins to rub Rachel’s clit, hard and fast now, finally giving her what she’s been begging for, and Rachel moans, loud, grasping onto Gill like she’s worried she’ll be carried away, turning to muffle her screams into Gill’s shoulder, unable to stop herself from rocking her hips, pleading, “Oh – please – don’t stop, please don’t stop, fuck, Gill, _fuck_ , yes, thank you, thank you…”

When it’s over Rachel goes quiet, breathing heavily, her cheek resting on Gill’s shoulder. Gill can feel her own pulse pounding through her body, and she tries to calm her ragged breathing, tries to stop her own hands from trembling. After a few moments, Rachel leans back. Gill studies her: her swollen lips, the flush across her cheeks. Then Rachel squeezes her eyes shut and covers her face, laughing. “ _Shit_ ,” she exclaims. “That was… I don’t even have words for what that was. Jesus. You’ve fucked me speechless.”

“Oh, somehow I very much doubt that,” Gill replies.

 _Well, now you’re in it_ , she thinks. _You absolute sodding fool._

Later, Rachel pads into Gill’s kitchen, returning with a bag of crisps. “You’ve got nothing to eat,” she says, sitting down on the floor and leaning back against Gill’s knees. 

“What’s this then?” Gill asks, reaching down for a handful.

“I mean real food. Your fridge is as pathetic as mine.” _Yes, well_ – Gill hadn’t been making many trips to the supermarket lately.

Rachel turns around, then, eyes gleaming. “You know – you’re a right sadist,” she says, pointing a crisp at Gill accusingly. “I mean, I always suspected, but you really are a proper sadist!”

Gill laughs, gesturing to the invisible audience in her living room. “Can you believe this? I spend my entire evening fucking her speechless, _allegedly_ , and this is how she thanks me? _Slander_.”

Rachel spins back around, settling against Gill’s legs. “Hmm. Coulda done that in five minutes. My thighs’ll be killing me tomorrow!”

“Oh, you’ll manage.”

“I’m serious! I’ll be lucky if I can walk.”

Gill throws a crisp at the back of Rachel’s head. “Quit your whinging, or I won’t do it again.”

Rachel opens her mouth to speak, then seems to think better of it.

“Smart girl,” says Gill.

“Sadist,” Rachel mutters under her breath before untangling the crisp from her hair and happily devouring it.


	2. Chapter 2

RACHEL

She’s never had sex like this before. Held down, begging, resisting, obeying. Not that it’s her first time with any of those, really – but up to now it had always been with some bloke who just... wanted to see her play the part. Wanted to be the big man, or act out whatever he’d been watching before she arrived. She never got the sense that any of them really meant it. _She’d_ certainly never meant it.

But with Gill, it’s something else. When Gill makes her beg, Rachel is _pleading,_ desperate – embarrassed, later, by her own need, blushing to think of the promises she’d made, the profane bargaining, the transparent desire that Gill could draw out of her. When Gill gives her an instruction, she pushes back, withstands, tests for the boundaries – but there’s never a question about whether she will, eventually, obey.

They shouldn’t be doing this. She knows that. They shouldn’t.

But she can’t not.

It’s just, everything that has always drawn her to Gill – the way she wields her authority, her sharp tongue, her unwillingness to take any shit, from anyone, ever – it’s all there, but magnified. It’s all trained directly on Rachel. 

She knows they shouldn’t. She _knows_ that.

But she can’t not.

*****

It’s all underscored, though, with her dread about Gill’s return to work, a countdown to Gill putting an end to whatever this – this _thing_ is, between them. Which, of course, she will; Gill’s reputation is immaculate, she’s not going to throw it away for a shag. _Just enjoy it while it lasts_ , Rachel keeps telling herself, but the thought strikes her as more and more depressing as the days pass, until finally she finds herself standing on Gill’s doorstep the night before she’s due back, steeling herself for the conversation she knows is coming.

Her hand hovers in the air, but she can’t quite manage to ring the bell. Instead she sighs, sits down on the stair, lights a fag. It’s the equivalent of begging for five more minutes of sleep in the morning – it won’t make a difference, she knows she’ll feel just as shitty when the time comes, but she’ll take every moment she can get before she has to face what’s coming.

The door opens behind her. “I thought I heard something,” Gill says. “What’re you doing out here?”

Rachel twists around, holding up her cigarette in explanation, exhaling a stream of smoke. Gill steps outside and settles down next to her on the step.

“How did it go?”

Rachel takes a long drag. “You were right. The daughter crumbled as soon as Janet asked about the ring.”

“Yeah, ‘course she did.” Gill leans back, resting on her palms. “Well, go on, then. Sing my praises, I’ll wait.”

Rachel can’t bring herself to look at Gill. She flicks ash down the stoop.

“That was a joke.”

“Yeah.”

“Not a very good one, apparently.” Gill straightens up and peers at her. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Well, if you’re worried there’ll be nothing left for you to do once I get back – you know, I think you should be,” Gill says, leaning back on her hands again. “I’ve gotten even more clever, somehow, which I honestly didn’t think was even possible. Maybe it’s all the sleep.”

Rachel smiles despite herself. “What sleep?”

“Speaking of my triumphant return,” Gill continues, and Rachel’s stomach drops. _Just five more minutes_ , she thinks wildly.

“Wait,” she says, and then she isn’t sure what to say next. Instead, she leans over, sliding a hand behind Gill’s neck, pulling her into a kiss. She can feel Gill stiffen in surprise.

“Rachel, stop,” Gill says, pulling away, glancing around.

“Oh, no one’s watching,” Rachel murmurs. She leans in again, but Gill puts a hand on her chest, holding her back.

“Stop,” she repeats. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing,” Rachel says, letting her hand drop. She turns away. Takes another long drag.

“Well, you’d better get _nothing_ under control before tomorrow. I’d hate to have to send you for another sexual harassment course, but if you try and snog me in the office I won’t have much choice, will I?”

Rachel just blinks. “I wouldn’t do that,” she says, and Gill gives her an amused look.

“Well, no, not without taking your life into your hands.” When Rachel doesn’t respond, Gill shakes her head. “Alright, well, I think we need to talk about where we go from here.”

Rachel takes a deep breath; now that the time has come, she just wants to get this over with. “No, we don’t,” she says, doing her best to sound indifferent. “It’s fine. We don’t need to have some big conversation.”

Gill raises her eyebrows. “No offence, kid, but this isn’t really the sort of thing I’m keen to leave to your judgment.”

“I’m not gonna tell anyone.”

“Well – yes, I’d hoped that much was obvious. But I want to be very clear. This, here, with us? It doesn’t exist there. At all. I don’t want to see a smirk from you, not a wink, not a single _glance_ out of order. Is that understood?”

“Yeah. Fine.”

“And I won’t be sneaking around the building with you – we’re not having any little stolen moments, I’m not running off for a mid-day shag in some closet somewhere. _This doesn’t exist_.”

It dawns on Rachel, finally, that Gill isn’t speaking in the past tense.

“Wait,” she says. “You’re saying this doesn’t exist… at work.”

Gill gives her an exasperated look. “ _Yes,_ Rachel, that’s what I’m saying. What, are you taking the piss?”

Rachel runs her tongue over her lower lip, trying to keep from smiling. Failing. “No! No. Sorry, I – right. After-hours shagging only. Got it.”

“Hey, I’m not being funny, lady. And while we’re at it, if you think you’re going to get any special treatment, forget it. I’m not looking the other way if you screw up. Whatever else is happening, in that building I’m still your boss, full stop.”

Rachel lets her grin go cocky. “Oh – just in that building?”

She thinks – is that – a little colour rising in Gill’s cheeks?

Gill clears her throat. “That is an example of something you will _not_ say at work.”

Rachel leans in until her lips are close to Gill’s ear. “No? Not even if I say it very, very quietly?” she murmurs, running her hand up the inside of Gill’s thigh.

Gill closes her eyes, giving in for the briefest moment. But then she opens them, her expression pained. “You need to take this seriously, Rachel.”

“I am.”

“I mean it. You’ve got to be professional.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“We both have. _Unassailably_ professional.”

Rachel leans back. “Boss, I will be the _model_ of professionalism.”

“Well, that’d be something to see, wouldn’t it?”

“Hey.”

Gill sighs. “I’d feel better about all this if you weren’t grinning at me like an idiot.”

Rachel takes a deep breath and rearranges her face. “Gill, really. I hear what you’re saying. I am taking it seriously, I promise.”

“You’d better be. Because your track record for bringing your personal life into work, is – well, you don’t need me to tell you what it is. And I won’t have that, Rachel, that absolutely cannot happen.”

 _Ouch._ “Look,” she says. “I’m not gonna fuck this up, okay? Honest.”

Gill stares at her for what feels like a very long time, and Rachel holds her gaze.

“Alright,” Gill says finally. “Well. In that case, I think you’d better come inside and remind me why you’re worth all this trouble.”

Rachel smirks. “Whatever you say, boss.”


	3. Chapter 3

GILL

Gill is desperate to get back to work. It’s her domain, her kingdom, the place where she’s at her best. She needs to feel that again – to walk down the halls, armed with her competence and skill, sure of herself, confident in her abilities. 

Because this thing with Rachel has completely upended her. She _knows_ it’s a bad idea, it’s so obviously a terrible, terrible idea, but she can’t seem to make herself stop. Because whatever there is between them is excellent, frankly, and she isn’t ready to give it up, despite her every instinct blaring the alarm. Rachel’s laughter, her whispers, those little whimpers – somehow, they’re louder than every reasonable voice in Gill’s head.

So in the end she decides there’s nothing for it except to plunge back in and hope for the best. She’s sworn Rachel to secrecy, lecturing her at length about acting normal. “Not a toe out of line,” she’s repeated, over and over. (And it doesn’t hurt, she supposes, that Rachel’s always looked a _bit_ like she wanted to shag her; Gill’s counting on that to help cover their tracks.)

And her first few weeks back are – great, actually. Brilliant. Like she never left. The cases coming and going, Rob Waddington there to offer help (earnest enough, if almost literally born yesterday), the team all eager to get back to normal, and Rachel doing a surprisingly good job of keeping her eyes on her own paper during the day. And at night – well, Rachel’s eyes, and the rest of her, pretty much just going wherever Gill tells them to go. 

_This can work_ , she thinks. 

Of course, there are little moments of friction here and there. Rachel would stay over every night, would practically move in if Gill didn’t insist she go home sometimes. And she keeps trying to _do things_ for Gill, which is sweet but… for heaven’s sake, Gill can cook her own dinner – and she can do it _without_ burning the onions, setting off the smoke alarm, leaving her entire house hazy and stinking. Still, she knows it’s well-intentioned. And their differences of opinion at work – interview strategy, that sort of thing – well, she can ignore the kid’s puppy dog eyes when she has to, she’s certainly had enough practice at that over the years. 

Yes, she’s making it work.

Still, she breathes a sigh of relief when Rachel passes the promotion board. Of course it’ll be a loss to the team if she’s put on another syndicate, but Gill can’t deny that it would really, massively simplify things. 

Which is all well and good, except then HR manages in the span of one phone call to entirely _un_ simplify them. Gill is in the middle of a particularly satisfying daydream, reliving the events of the night before – flashes of skin, the way Rachel starts to pant when she gets truly desperate – when the phone rings. And by the time she hangs up, despite her many protestations, she’s saddled with having to choose between them. Janet or Rachel, to be sergeant. One to go, one to stay.

It’s an absurd choice; even under normal circumstances, she can’t fathom how she’d decide. With Janet comes experience, the trust that has been built between them over 20 years of friendship – responsible, steadfast Janet. And then Rachel: rebellious, temperamental, yes, but clever, intuitive, all ambition and hunger and instinct.

Each time she thinks she’s settled on one of them, she overthinks, talks herself out of it. When she makes up her mind for Janet, she starts to worry she’s punishing Rachel, sending her away just to make things easier. But when she imagines offering the job to Rachel, she worries that she’s compromised, that there’s no way she can possibly be objective given the, well… circumstances.

Rob’s no help, of course. And what’s she meant to do, poll the team? She’s almost tempted to call Julie and confess everything, beg her to make the choice instead, but of course that’s out of the question. She just needs to resolve it, quickly, so they can all get past it, end of. 

_Just have it done._

And then – she’s completely blindsided when Janet says no. For chrissakes, it’s been _one sodding day_ since she went in front of the board. But okay, alright, fine, not the right time for her, fine. That simplifies things, she supposes, in its own way. So it’s Rachel after all, though Gill knows that when she finds out she wasn’t first choice she’ll be beyond gutted, prone as she is to insecurity and a certain… theatrical bent, even at the best of times. 

And maybe she _is_ compromised; she knows she ought to tell Rachel the truth, but in the end she can’t bear the thought of having that conversation with her. So. Yet another secret to keep, now with Janet. Brilliant.

She calls Rachel into her office. 

“You’re going to be our new sergeant.” Despite her concerns, Gill really does enjoy the shocked look on Rachel’s face. “Are you pleased?”

“Yes.” Gill watches it sink in, the little smile playing across Rachel’s face, brushing her fingers across her lips, trying to stay cool. Gill, too, reminding herself: professional, stay professional.

“You have to conduct yourself differently as a sergeant, you just do,” she tells her. “You’re going to have to try and do that in front of colleagues who know the old you very, very well. It won’t be easy.”

“Yeah, but…” Rachel sighs. “Well, if I went somewhere new, I’d have to prove myself anyway.”

“You have to prove yourself wherever you are.” 

“I _know_ that,” she retorts, starting to slip into that bratty tone that Gill can’t admit she kind of loves.

“Don’t get defensive with _me_ , I believe in you! That’s exactly the attitude you need to rein in. If you keep up the self-discipline, as you seem to be doing, if you don’t let your personal life get ridiculous again, I know you’ll do brilliantly.” Gill can’t resist teasing her, testing her, waiting to see if she’ll rise to the bait. 

But Rachel just grins, knowing, resisting, and says, “Thank you.” 

“Don’t let me down.”

“I won’t,” she replies sincerely, and Gill turns back to her work; she’s never been entirely sure how to respond to that unconcealed sort of adoration Rachel sometimes radiates. Not while they’re both wearing clothes, anyway.

Later, they run into one another at the sinks. They stand side-by-side, eyes meeting in the mirror.

“I was thinking,” Gill says, scrubbing her hands efficiently, “that this deserves a proper celebration.” 

Rachel smirks like she’s been waiting for this, and turns off the tap. She passes behind Gill on her way to dry her hands and leans toward her ear. “Well. I don’t imagine there’ll be much proper about it.”

Gill has to close her eyes for a second. When she opens them, Rachel is standing at the door, her expression suddenly sober. 

“Boss. Just to be clear, I didn’t get this promotion because…”

Gill knows she has to shut down this line of thinking immediately. “Don’t be ridiculous.” 

“Right.”

“Listen – I like you, kid, but not enough to let you sink my syndicate. You earned this. I wouldn’t have offered it otherwise.”

God, that grin. “Right,” Rachel says again. “Right, okay. So… I’ll see you later, then.”

Gill takes a deep breath, shakes her head at her own reflection, dries her hands, and follows Rachel out.


	4. Chapter 4

RACHEL

Rachel flips the car’s mirror toward her, ignoring Janet’s _tsk_ , and examines her reflection. She really needs to get more sleep. She studies the dark circles under her eyes, pinches at her pale cheeks. _Ah well, worth it_ , she thinks, smirking a bit.

Janet reaches over and flips the mirror back into place. “Okay,” she says. “Can I just say, Rachel, that I’m starting to feel a bit nervous.”

“Yeah? What about?”

“I don’t mean to pry – or, well, I suppose I do, actually – but I’m just wondering, what is it, exactly, that’s got you so happy lately, and why aren’t you… talking about it?”

“What d’you mean?” Rachel asks, putting on a face that she hopes conveys “confused innocence” and not “I’m sleeping with our boss.”

“Well, normally I get every detail of every date you go on and – frequently including many details I could probably live without, if I’m honest – but suddenly you’re swanning about, grinning your face off, and you’ve not even mentioned his name. _So_ , _hence_ – nervous.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not swanning – I’m always like this!”

Janet glances over, giving her that patient, long-suffering look. “Oh, yes. That’s how I describe you to people. ‘Our Rach, a regular Pollyanna. Smiles so much it’s boring, really.’”

Rachel raises her eyebrows, chuckling. “Yeah, exactly. What, are you sayin’ I’m not a joy to be around?”

“Well, you’ve hardly _been_ around lately—” 

“I was at yours two nights ago!”

“And you keep leaving the pub at a shockingly reasonable hour—”

“Yeah, well I’ve got a lot on with this sergeant gig, haven’t I?”

Janet pauses. “Are you not telling me because you think I won’t approve? Not that you need my approval.”

“I’m not _tellin’_ ya because there’s nothing to tell.”

“Because I know we had a bit of a bust-up about Kevin…”

“Eugh.”

“But you’re not shagging whoever-it-is at my house, so what does it matter?”

Rachel tries to keep her voice light. “Janet, I’m not shaggin’ anyone, in anyone’s house. Can’t I just be in a good mood?”

“For weeks at a time? For no reason? Sure, in theory, I suppose, but it’s never happened before,” Janet teases. “So what is it we’re dealing with here? Politician? Celeb? Ooh, it’s not a cousin is it?”

She laughs. “You’re barkin’ up a tree with nought in it, mate, I’m tellin’ ya.”

“Look, Rach, all I’m saying is that whenever you’re keeping something from me, little alarm bells start going off in my head. Because sometimes it’s, ‘Oh, I was planning your surprise birthday party,’ but sometimes it’s, ‘I’ve got back together with a bloke who’s hired someone to kill me.’”

Rachel frowns.

“Just promise me,” Janet continues, “that if it’s something, you’ll tell me before it’s… _something_.”

“I’m tellin’ ya it’s _nothing_ , Janet. It’s your brain makin’ up stories. But if something comes up... yeah, ‘course I’ll tell ya.”

Janet gives her a sceptical look. 

“Anyway – it’s here, on the left,” Rachel says. “Do you want me to take the lead on this one?”

_Just let it go, pal, please._

“Just so you’re aware,” Janet says, parking the car, “you’re about as good a liar as Taisie. And she gets caught for everything.”

“Well yeah, ‘course she does. Her mum interrogates people for a living, poor kid.”

As they reach the front door, Janet gives her an appraising sort of look. “You probably could have used a little more interrogating, growing up,” she says. “It’s what stops kids going completely feral.”

Rachel grins as she knocks. “See, that’s what you’re not getting, Janet. Some people _like_ completely feral.”

“Yeah,” Janet says. “And when you tell me his name, I’ll know who, won’t I?”


	5. Chapter 5

GILL

It’s honestly just bad luck that the Mandy Sweeting case is the first to come their way after Gill names Rachel acting sergeant. The inquiry is complicated, sprawling – Gill herself is in it up to her ears, no time at all to hold Rachel’s hand, so the kid’s just going to have to deal with being thrown in the deep end. Not that she seems particularly concerned; even when Gill tries to give her some idea of the scope of what they’re facing, Rachel just responds with her characteristic bravado. “Oh, stop worryin’, boss. You’re incredible, I’m amazing. We’ll have it done in a day.”

At first Gill thinks it might actually be useful to have Rob shadow Rachel on the case. He has some experience, anyway, and maybe Rachel will turn to him for advice, since her blustering swagger obviously won’t let her ask Gill for much. But Rachel chafes – and really, Gill should have expected it – she chafes at his presence, treats him like an enemy, goes on the defensive. She says it isn’t personal, but no one’s fooled when she starts needling him about the way his father handled the case twenty years ago. “The original investigation is just… _unbelievably_ shallow, shoddy,” she announces in front of everyone. “It’s one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read in my life. I don’t know. Words fail me. It’s just shit.”

So that was a fun meeting.

Gill doesn’t want to step in; they need to work it out between themselves. But Jesus, it’s the same as always with Rachel, isn’t it? She’s clever, yes, but somehow you can always tell where she’s been by the trail of chaos and conflict she leaves behind her. _For god’s sake, who raised you?_ Gill wants to ask sometimes, except she’s met Sharon Bailey and – well.

Still, she of all people knows that Rachel is perfectly capable of exercising self-control when she really wants to. It’s just a question of… sufficient motivation. And constraint, as Gill has recently discovered, has a way of inspiring Rachel where incentive has failed. So when she decides to bring Rob’s father in to talk about the old investigation, she tracks Rachel down to let her know she won’t be going anywhere near the man.

“Why?” Rachel asks, leaning against the sink in the toilets, putting some kind of drops into her eyes. She sounds genuinely surprised that Gill won’t let her march in and tell Frankie Waddington he’s got shit for brains.

Gill manages to refrain from rolling her eyes. “Because you’ll go on the attack,” she explains as calmly as she can. “Sergeants don’t just manage down, you know, Rachel. You manage sideways, and up. You look after your peer relationships. You look after Rob. What’s that for?”

Rachel frowns, holding up the small bottle in her hand. “Tired eyes.”

“Just your eyes?” Gill asks, letting her voice go arch. “You must be slacking.”

She knows Rachel well enough to know that she’s gesturing rudely behind her back, but she doesn’t care.

_Come on, kid. Get it together._


	6. Chapter 6

RACHEL

Rachel’s exhausted. Really, though – how many inconsequential details can possibly fall to her? Who cares which car needs servicing or who needs time off or when CPS needs the fucking disclosure schedule? She’s going to scream if Rob gives her one more sanctimonious lecture, and Gill hasn’t let up for a second, and all Rachel wants to do is, y’know, _solve crimes_ , which is apparently too much to ask, what with the press office calling for the thousandth time and a mountain of paperwork on her desk and the fact that she can barely keep her eyes open.

And there’s no way she’s asking Rob for anything. She’d rather die, rather chew her own arm off, rather move in with _Alison and the fucking kiddies_ than give him that satisfaction. And she really doesn’t want to ask Gill for help either, not after that little speech about how she has to prove herself, and how she’d better not let Gill down. Not that Gill’s offering help, anyway; she seems perfectly content to just stand there watching Rachel flounder about, out of her depth, struggling to stay afloat under the dual weight of her new responsibilities and Rob’s moronic irritating bullshit. Following Gill home from work that evening, Rachel blasts her music, ranting to herself, getting more and more annoyed – at Rob, Gill, the lot of them. When she parks in Gill’s drive, Gill is already out of her own car, leaning against it, waiting.

“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” Gill says.

“Yeah, what’s that, Rob’s knobhead dad? Apple didn’t fall far from the bloody tree, did—”

“No, no, Rachel. No.” Gill looks over at her, thoughtfully, tapping her lower lip. “I woke up this morning with this image of you, in my head – this image of you, touching yourself – and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

Rachel exhales sharply, dips her head. “Fuck, Gill.” (Oh, right - _this_ is why she can’t manage to stay annoyed with her for more than five minutes.)

“I just thought I’d mention it.”

Rachel snorts. “Oh yeah, thanks. Jesus – you can’t just say something like that to a girl when she’s not prepared. It’s not fair.”

“Well that’s on you, lady. What about any of this led to you being unprepared?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

As soon as the front door closes behind them, Rachel turns, grinning. “Touching myself? Really?”

“It just came to me. Like a vision.” 

Rachel laughs.

They climb the staircase to Gill’s bedroom, and Gill perches on the edge of the bed, leaning back on her hands, looking extremely pleased with herself. 

Rachel licks her lips. “Alright, well, how did this… _vision_ start?” she asks. 

“Well, you didn’t have any clothes on, for one thing.”

“Right. Okay. So I’ll just… right, I’ll just do a little striptease then, shall I?” Rachel says.

Gill shrugs. “However you like. I’ve yet to see you undress in a way I haven’t enjoyed.”

It’s odd, really. She’s spent about half her time lately lying around naked with Gill, but she feels suddenly self–conscious, pulling her shirt over her head, stepping out of her trousers as Gill sits there watching, fully clothed. She slips her bra off, shimmies out of her knickers. Clears her throat. “Ta-da.”

Gill stands up and crosses over to Rachel, cupping her face with her hands. “It occurs to me that I am very, very lucky,” she says, kissing her, and Rachel starts to relax.

“Now what?”

“Now,” Gill says, “come here.”

They lie down next to one another on the bed, Gill propped up on one arm, running a hand across Rachel’s stomach, over her breasts. Rachel’s still feeling strangely shy, but as Gill’s hands move over her skin, as she looks into Gill’s eyes, watching Gill watching her, her heart starts pounding. She slips her hand down and finds herself slick and swollen. _Fuck_ , she thinks. _This… actually might not take very long_.

“What do you think about when you’re alone?” Gill asks in a low voice.

Rachel swallows. _Really?_ “Um. Well. Mostly… well, mostly you, lately.”

“Only lately?” 

She doesn’t answer, cheeks reddening, and she bites her lip, closes her eyes. She can still feel Gill watching her, feels her fingertips run down her arm to her wrist, to where her hand is moving. 

“And what do you think about, when you think about me?” 

Rachel takes an uneven breath, opens her eyes. She considers for a second. “Well… the other night I was thinking… I dunno, like, we’re at work… and… I’m under your desk, while you're on the phone…” 

“Oh,” Gill says. “Oh – I like that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Gill gets a glint, a sort of faraway look in her eye, and it’s a long moment before she seems to come back to herself. “Mmm. Yeah. What else?” 

Rachel wants to see that look again. “Well… sometimes I think… after everyone’s gone, I go into your office. And we’re alone, and you sort of… bend me over…” 

Gill leans in, running her hand across Rachel’s skin. “I bend you over my desk, hmm?” Rachel nods. “Oh, I like that too. I spread your legs, touching you like that, like you’re touching yourself?” 

Rachel closes her eyes again. “Yes.”

“Pressing into you. Feeling how wet you are.”

She takes a shaking breath. “Yes.”

“Sliding my fingers inside of you.”

“Fuck. Yes.”

“How does that feel? How does it feel when I touch you?” 

Rachel starts to move her hand faster. “Mmm – it feels amazing, it feels – god, it feels so good. I can’t take it.” 

“Oh, I think you can,” Gill murmurs, running a hand down Rachel’s stomach, down her thigh, nudging her legs farther apart. “I’m behind you, bending you over my desk, and my fingers are sliding over you, sliding into you – is that what you think about?”

Rachel feels herself grow wetter as Gill’s voice hums through her, putting words to this thing she’s only ever imagined. “Yes.” 

Gill’s voice is light as she traces a finger across Rachel’s lower lip. “Right there in my office, hmm, where anyone who walked in would see us through the glass? They’d see you there, leaned over, letting me fuck you, wouldn’t they?” 

Rachel groans.

“They’d see you holding onto my desk, ready to come for me, my fingers inside you, sliding in and out… but you wouldn’t want me to stop, would you? Even if someone was watching.”

“God, Gill…“

“Mmm,” Gill says, sliding her hand across Rachel’s hips. “No. You’d beg me to keep going. To bring you closer and closer… and what do I do when you think about me, Rachel? Do I make you come fast? Or do I tease you until you’re begging and desperate and ready to scream?”

Rachel catches a small sob in the back of her throat, and Gill smirks. “That’s what I thought.” 

She reaches down then, grasping Rachel’s wrist, stopping her hand. Rachel groans. “No – Gill – please.”

“Please what?”

“Don’t make me stop,” she pants.

“Why not?”

Gill keeps doing this to her. Making her say her thoughts out loud. Drawing her secrets into the light, putting them on mortifying display. “Because… god, I want to come for you,” she says, voice shaking. “Because I think about you and – it feels incredible, Gill, the things you do to me, and I want to – fuck – let me come for you, please. I need it.”

“Oh – you need it?”

“Yes.” She’s rambling, not sure what she’s even saying now, but she doesn’t care. “Please. I do, I need it. _Please_.”

Gill raises an eyebrow. “Hmm. Alright, then, convince me that you need it.”

_Fuck._ She tries to focus, tries to wring a coherent thought from her brain. “You  – Gill,  you don’t understand. I think about you all the time, I think about – your fingers, your hands, your – god, your mouth, and I can’t – I can’t concentrate, I can’t _breathe_ sometimes because of how much I want you. Please don’t make me stop.” Her eyes travel over Gill’s face, hungry, but Gill just stares down at her impassively, and she kicks a little, frustrated. “Please, I just – want you, I just want you—”

She sits up, leaning forward, kissing Gill deeply, eagerly, trying to make her understand, trying to show her what she does to her, what Rachel would do for her. And Gill lets her, for a minute – but only for a minute. Then she pushes Rachel back down onto the bed, hovering over her, eyes flashing. Gives her that _look_. Leans in, her breath warm in Rachel’s ear.

“Alright. Since you _need it_ so badly,” she says, voice low, taunting, and she moves Rachel’s hand back into place. “I’m fucking you, hard, spread against my desk, and I’m not stopping. That’s what you think about?” 

“Yes,” Rachel moans, circling her clit. “Fuck. Yes.”

She whimpers as Gill grazes her teeth over the skin of her neck, her shoulder, biting down. Then Gill moves lower, taking one of Rachel’s nipples between her teeth, sucking hard, making her gasp. 

And then lower. Rachel shakes as Gill slides down, kissing her stomach, over her hip bones, pausing to watch Rachel’s fingers moving, slick and furious. And then she’s between her thighs, and Rachel’s breath hitches as Gill moves her hand aside and slips – so softly – slips her tongue over Rachel’s clit, and _oh my god, Gill, oh – god_ – it’s – fuck – it’s aching – perfect – and Rachel moans, arching her back, every inch of her afire with _yes, oh, fuck, yes_ …. Gill holds her in place, tongue gentle at first, then faster, all of Rachel’s muscles tensing and _oh, oh fuck, oh god,_ it’s gonna make her come, _fuck, yes_ – she can feel Gill’s own moans like vibrations through her cunt and it’s already too much, already overwhelming even before Gill slides her fingers inside her, and Rachel stops breathing altogether then, she can only tremble, hands scrabbling for something to hold onto, eyes squeezed shut, _oh – yes_ , _fuck_ , she’s going to – _yes_ — 

And then as quickly as she began Gill pulls away, kissing Rachel’s thighs, kissing back up her stomach, and Rachel is gasping and blinking, trying to orient herself, trying to breathe.

“Mmm. And then what?” Gill murmurs.

Rachel whimpers. “Fuck. _Fuck,_ Gill.”

“What happens next when you’re thinking about me?” she asks, propping herself up next to Rachel again, placing a hand over hers, guiding it back into place.

Their fingers are tangled together now, both Gill’s and hers slipping over her clit, Gill holding her hand there, making sure she doesn’t let up. “Then – god…” 

“Then do you ask me something?”

_I can’t, I can’t, I’m so close_. “Gill, please—”

“What do you ask me, Rachel?”

_Fuck._ Her voice is shaking as she speaks. “I ask – if I can come.”

“Mmm, good girl,” Gill says, sliding two fingers inside her, making her moan. “And what does that sound like?” 

_Fuckfuckfuck_. She lets out a trembling breath, trying to stay in control.

“Rachel? You’re bent over my desk, and how do you ask me?”

_Oh my god._ “Fuck – Gill, can I – can I come?”

“Oh, I think you can do better than that.” Rachel groans, shaking. “Try again.”

She can’t hold off any longer, not like this, Gill’s fingers sliding over her, into her— “ _Please_! _Please_ can I come – fuck – Gill, I can’t—” 

“Oh, now where’s your self-control, detective?” Gill admonishes, leaning down. She kisses Rachel gently, leisurely, and Rachel moans, long and low, shaking, trying, desperate to obey.

“ _Pleasepleaseplease,_ fuck, I can’t, I can’t,” she finally whispers against Gill’s mouth, and Gill leans back, studying her. 

After a moment that seems to go on forever – she nods.

Rachel’s forgotten any self-consciousness now, eyes closed, crying out, pressing into herself, the orgasm pulsing through her – half her mind there on Gill’s bed, the other half leaning over her desk, held down, legs spread, Gill’s fingers deep inside her.

When her hand finally slows, she looks up. Gill is watching her, eyes blazing – and even though Rachel just came she has to exhale a long, shaking breath against the wanting that washes over her. 

She stares at the ceiling for a moment, then rolls over and kisses her. “Fuck. _Fuck_. What are you _doing_ to me?”

“What – me? I’m just lying here.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Rachel says, smiling. “An innocent bystander.”

“Mmm. Exactly,” Gill says, reaching over to tuck Rachel’s hair behind her ear. Rachel takes the opportunity to grab her wrist and pull her closer.

“Okay, my turn,” she says. “I’ll have my striptease now. And all your dirtiest fantasies about me.”

“Oh, you’re dreaming, kid,” Gill says, laughing. 

“Come on. _One_ fantasy.”

Gill raises her eyebrows, glancing around. “What do you think this was?”

“Ohhhh, I see,” Rachel says, leaning in for another kiss. “Alright, fine, so when are we gonna act out _my_ fantasies, then?”

“When am I going to bend you over my desk, you mean?”

Rachel reaches over, starts unbuttoning Gill’s shirt. “God. I’m going to regret telling you that, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know. How badly are you going to blush the next time I call you into my office?”

Rachel feels the heat start to rise in her cheeks just thinking about it. But – _no._ Problem for tomorrow.

“Yeah, well, I have others, you know,” she says, running her fingertips along the ridge of Gill’s collarbone. “Fantasies. Daydreams. Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Gill reaches over, running a hand through Rachel’s hair, and Rachel bites her lip, smiling as she tightens her grip. “Mmm,” Gill says. “Try me.”


	7. Chapter 7

GILL

Rachel does blush a bit the next time Gill calls her into her office – licking her lips, clearing her throat, eyes on the ceiling. Gill has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

But the kid gets on with it, they both do, until _finally_ , the team manages to solve the Sweeting case. Gill’s almost sad to see Rob go in the end – Rachel’s sneering hatred may have been immature and disruptive, but the knowledge that her nemesis wouldn’t leave until the case was over certainly lit quite a fire under her.

They gather at the pub later that week to send him off. 

“Did I ever tell you when you smile it’s like the sun coming out?” Gill asks him. Shit, too much wine. She refuses to let her eyes flicker over to Rachel, refuses to check her reaction.

“Er, no,” Rob replies, looking mildly uncomfortable. 

Hah. Yes. Well. “That’s because I’m _so_ professional.” She turns then. “Rachel Bailey, of the Old Bailey, will be full-blown sergeant as of now. Hello, and good luck.”

As everyone lifts their glasses to Rachel, Gill takes a breath and pushes on. “And the other bit of good news is… I’m retiring. Four months and counting.” Again, she avoids Rachel’s eye. “Cheers.”

To Rachel’s credit, she doesn’t react. Not then, anyway. Not until after the well-wishes die down and Gill excuses herself to the loo, where Rachel follows a moment later, locking the door behind them.

“You’re retiring?” she asks, too casually. “Since when?”

Gill leans against the sink and crosses her arms. “Since today.”

“Oh. You… didn’t say anything.”

“No, well I wouldn’t, would I?” A look of hurt flits across Rachel’s face, and Gill tries to soften her tone. “Oh, don’t get upset. I honestly didn’t know I was going to do it until I did it. I was on the phone with the DSU this afternoon and I just – I don’t know, I just said it.”

Rachel looks baffled. “But – _why_?”

Gill sighs. “Because I did. Because it’s time. I don’t know.”

The truth was, Gill honestly _didn’t_ know why she’d said it; the words had just sort of tumbled out of her mouth. But they’d felt good somehow, like a pressure valve releasing, so she’d let them lie.

“But you just got back.”

“Well, what – did you think I’d be here forever?”

“No. I thought… I don’t know,” Rachel says, frowning. “I thought you’d at least mention it, if you were leaving.”

“Oh, stop your sulking. Come on, this is a good night. You’re our sergeant now – that’s big! That’s worth celebrating.”

“Yeah,” Rachel says vaguely.

“ _Yeah_.” Gill sighs. “Rachel, honestly, it’s months off. Can’t we just have a nice evening?”

Rachel takes a slow, deep breath, her expression still troubled. “Well, I don’t know,” she says after a moment, raising an eyebrow. “I suppose we could ask little Robbie Waddington to smile for us. I hear it’s like the sun coming out.”

Gill laughs. “Well, he does have a very sweet smile, you have to admit.”

“He has not! He’s got that simpering, snivelling little…” She blows the air out of her cheeks, searching for a word.

“Oh, now that wouldn’t be _jealousy_ I’m sensing, would it, Sergeant?”

Rachel crosses the small room, placing her hands onto the sink on either side of Gill, smiling. “So it’s sweet you like, is it? That wasn’t really the impression I’d gotten.”

“It happens I’m an individual of great complexity,” Gill says, but the dignified tone she’s aiming for is somewhat undermined by the tremble in her voice as Rachel starts biting a trail down her neck.

“I can be the sun coming out, if you like,” Rachel murmurs into her ear.

“Oh, you are,” Gill breathes as Rachel’s hands slide under her shirt. “You are.”


	8. Chapter 8

RACHEL

Rachel lies with her head on Gill’s chest, listening to her heartbeat. It’s still thudding, fast. Rachel smiles, self-satisfied; she’d earned that racing pulse.

She rests there, listening to it slow, tracing lazy shapes on Gill’s stomach. 

“Should we tell Janet, do you think?” she says after a while.

Gill stops stroking her hair. “No. Why would we?”

“I dunno. Because she’s… Janet.” 

“Rachel,” Gill says. “I’m the DCI. I’m your line manager. I _just_ promoted you.”

She smiles. “Yeah, you don’t have to keep reminding me, boss, I’m already well and seduced.”

Gill swats at the back of her head, and Rachel laughs. “I just don’t like keeping things from her,” she continues.

“No, nor do I,” Gill says, sighing. “But you know all it takes is one person, and then it’s off and running.”

“Well, yeah, I know, but – Janet wouldn’t say anything.”

“Still. It isn’t a fair position to put her in.”

Rachel lifts her head, shifting to face Gill. “Well, she knows _somethin’s_ up. She’s convinced I’m dating someone, and she keeps trying to guess who it is.”

“Yeah? Any good guesses?”

“Oh, sure, dead on,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Today’s guess was Mitch’s dad. She had this whole elaborate theory.”

Gill laughs. “Hey, I’ve met Mitch’s dad. Honestly, you could do worse.”

“Oh, yeah, Mitch was chuffed to bits when I told him to start callin’ me mum,” Rachel says, grinning. “Thing is, I keep telling her I’m not seeing anyone, but then she reckons I’m mad at her. Which – I don’t know. I guess I haven’t been ‘round to hers in more than a week.”

“How often are you usually there?”

Rachel snorts and tilts her head. “Oh, you know, just every time I have a personal crisis. So, like, about every other day or so.”

Gill smiles. “Alright, so why not see her tomorrow night, then?”

Rachel groans and buries her face in Gill’s neck. “Because she’s going to ask me what I’ve been up to,” she says, voice muffled, “and I can’t tell her.”

“Well, Rach – and this might sound mad, I know, but hear me out – maybe you could ask her about what’s going on in _her_ life.”

Rachel lifts her head, feigning outrage. “Excuse me, _DCI Murray_. Are you implying that I’m self-absorbed?”

Gill grins. “Honestly, Sergeant,” she says, pulling Rachel back down into the crook of her arm, “after that orgasm, I’m inclined to nominate you for sainthood.”

*****

Gill actually seems less stressed, now she’s decided to retire. Calmer, more centred. She’s more relaxed around Rachel. “I trust you,” she says in the office – where other people might hear it, even. Says things like, “I want that double-checked – by _you_.” They’re joking around more. “I hate karaoke,” Rachel announces. “That’s ‘cause you’re dead inside,” Gill says, without missing a beat. It’s a new kind of intimacy. Comfortable. Even though her mother is a complete wreck, and even though the sergeant's job is still making her head spin, at least there’s this.

Her mother though – Christ, it’s like the woman is intentionally trying to destroy her life. Apparently coming ‘round the pub, plastered, flashing her tits at strangers, _lovin’ em and leavin’ em,_ isn’t bad enough. No, now she’s got to show up to the station begging favours for some arsehole – some prick she’s calling her _fiancé_ – who’s managed to get himself nicked for selling drugs outside a bloody primary school. 

It’s not like Rachel doesn’t have enough on. They’ve got a new case – a hate crime, delicate, and they’re already behind given the duty detective on call was an incompetent twat – and Gill’s made it more than clear that Rachel’s personal life absolutely cannot make an appearance at work. So she ignores her mum, at first. But after Janet points out that Sharon’ll probably just talk her way upstairs anyway, she grits her teeth and takes a deep breath and heads down to sort it.

Something about seeing her mother here at work, the incongruousness of her, throws things into sudden sharp relief for Rachel. She observes Sharon as though from far away – sitting on the bench outside the building, hunched over a cup of coffee, stinking of booze, looking for all the world like everything Rachel has been trying to outrun her entire adult life: sleazy, tawdry, squalid. Rachel knows her disgust must be evident on her face, but she can’t muster up anything else at the moment.

Thing is, she’s drawn a line in the sand. This is the mess – this is _exactly_ the mess – that she has to leave behind her if she’s going to grow up and be the person Gill wants her to be. The person she really, really hopes she can be.

“You, here, isn’t right,” she says, trying to find the words that will make it make sense to her mother. To herself. “It’s not on, do you understand me? I can’t have you near me. I just need you to leave me alone.” She’s not sure why she empties her pockets, shoving a few quid into Sharon’s hands. She’s improvising, flailing; no one gives lessons on how to cut your mother out of your life. 

She does her best. 

But her relief only lasts about ten seconds, right up until she rifles through Rufus’ file and has a look at his priors. As it turns out, selling drugs is apparently him on his best behaviour; his record reads like an alphabet of dull-witted brutality: ABH, GBH, DV. Well, her mum always could pick ‘em.

Still, her first instinct is to turn back and try and catch her, warn her. But she’s got Gill’s voice in her head: _Don’t let me down._

And so she turns, goes back upstairs. Back to work.

_Fuck it. She’s an adult. She can make her own choices._

******

She doesn’t realize until halfway through the briefing that she forgot to read last night’s handover messages. Gill had left her with a massive list of things to do, all high-priority, and dealing with her mum had taken up half the morning, and it’s not until she makes a complete dick of herself in front of everyone that she realizes her mistake. Realizes they’ve been prioritizing the wrong suspect all day, failing to follow up on relevant leads, maybe giving Adam Hutchings the chance to destroy evidence. Shit. _Shit_.

Gill calls her into her office for a proper dressing down, with yelling and all. “You’re telling me you’ve been too _busy_?” she snaps. Rachel tries to look repentant, but Gill isn’t having it. “Concentrate on the job. Deal with your mum on your own time.” 

A low blow, and _Christ_ , Rachel wants to yell back, _I’ve been sergeant for all of a week, my mom’s a nutter, I’ve got you fucking me into oblivion every night – I can barely keep my eyes open! What do you want from me?_

She stalks out of Gill’s office and throws herself down at her desk. “How long’s she got left?” she mutters to Janet.

“You’ve got another four months yet.”

She pulls out her vape pen – another conciliation to Godzilla, with her pointed comments about lung cancer and the taste of cigarettes on Rachel’s tongue – and mutters to Janet. “She’ll postpone her retirement so she can extend her window of torture. Serial killers take less delight in their victims’ pain than she does.” 

Janet laughs. “She’ll have forgotten it by tomorrow.”

_Yeah, maybe_ , Rachel thinks. _But not by tonight_.

*****

She shows up on Gill’s doorstep later that evening. It’s a shock Gill even lets her in, given Rachel’s surly and snappish from the start, not even trying to disguise her anger. Of course Gill doesn’t seem all that thrilled, either, and she never was one to avoid a fight, so.

Rachel paces around, stone-faced, seething, pouring herself a glass of wine and gulping it down before finally turning on Gill.

“You were just waiting for me to fuck up, weren’t you?”

Gill’s own simmering ire seems to falter for a moment, flickering into surprise. “What?”

“You,” she says, pointing her wine glass at Gill accusingly, “are lookin’ for reasons to come down on me. Because you’re worried about getting _caught_.” 

“Oh, you think I was hard on you today because of this?” Gill says, gesturing between them. “Come off it. You cocked up my investigation – how exactly did you imagine that conversation was going to go?”

“Was there any part of you thinkin’, _I know she’s trying, she’s bloody exhausted, her mum’s insane, maybe I’ll cut her a bit of slack_? No, ‘course not, couldn’t be _reasonable_ , could you, ‘cause someone might be _watching_. It’s bullshit, Gill. I am too good at this job to be treated like a kid who forgot her sodding homework, just because you’re worried someone might figure out what’s up.”

“Yes, well, that argument might be a little more persuasive if you hadn’t _forgotten your sodding homework_ , Rachel. You didn’t read the messages! Christ, it’s basic stuff we’re talking about.”

“If it had been Janet—”

“Then I would’ve been yelling at Janet.”

“Would you bollocks! If it’d been her you’d’ve been all, ‘Ooh, tough day, was it, laydeh? Let’s get you some wine.’”

Gill raises her eyebrows. “Is that supposed to be me?”

“With me it’s, ‘Right then, knobhead, too thick to do your job, better have a go at ya.’”

“Oh, for god’s sake. You’re a _sergeant_ now, Rachel. I’m not treating you worse, I’m expecting better. If that’s going to be a problem, then maybe we need to have a different conversation.”

“Oh, what, now you’re gonna sack me?”

Gill rolls her eyes. “Alright, you messed up, I told you off, can we please move on?”

“And it’s _really_ not on bringing me mum into it. Thanks for that.”

“Rachel…”

“No, really, that was brilliant. Just in case I wasn’t having a totally shit day.”

“See, this is what I’m talking about – I don’t care how your day was, Rachel! You think I don’t have shit days? You pull your socks up and you get the work done anyway.”

Rachel collapses onto Gill’s sofa and leans forward, massaging her forehead. “Yeah, well, I sent her away, didn’t I? I threw a few quid at her and told her I never wanted to see her again. Jesus. You act like I’m not trying.”

Gill stares at her. “Well – I didn’t know that.”

“No, ‘course you didn’t. Too busy yellin’ at me to be arsed.”

“Alright, you know what, Rachel? I'm sorry about your mum, but I’m still your boss, and – god, we have _talked_ about this. Whatever it is we’re doing here, when we’re in there I have a syndicate to run, I’ve got a hundred different people needing things from me every second of the day, and I don’t always have time for The Rachel Bailey Show, so sometimes, yeah, I just need you to get on with it. And I’ll tell you what else – I really don’t like this, you following me home when you’re upset about something at work, throwing it in my face.”

Rachel sputters, indignation tripping her tongue. “Are you serious? _The Rachel Bailey Show_? In case you hadn’t noticed, _Gill_ , you’re in charge of when we shag, you’re in charge of _how_ we shag, you’re in charge of who we tell, which is no one, so I’m lyin’ to everyone, you’re in charge at work, and now, what, you want to be in charge of whether or not I’m allowed be angry about it? Yeah, you can fuck right off with your _Rachel Bailey Show_ – it’s been the Gill fucking Murray Show since day one.”

Gill sighs and closes her eyes. She takes a slow, deep breath. “Alright, well… alright,” she says. “If that’s how you feel then – fine. What would you like me to do about it?”

“Oh, now I’m allowed an opinion?”

Rachel’s still incensed, incandescent, ready for battle – but her stomach sinks when Gill starts talking again. She’s switched to using that distant, polite work-voice, the one designed to smooth things over without too much fuss. It’s like Gill is suddenly gone, like she’s disappeared behind some invisible wall Rachel didn’t even realize she was building.

“Alright, well, here’s what I think,” she says. “I think it’s my job, as your manager, to hold these boundaries, and I haven’t. That’s not on you, it’s on me. And if you want to stop, everything will go back just as it was, I promise you.”

“Hey.”

“I shouldn’t say _if_. _If you want to stop_. I should stop this now. The responsible thing – the professionally, certainly the morally responsible thing to do is to stop this now.”

“Hang on. Boss.” Rachel leans over, takes her hand, pulls her down onto the sofa next to her. “Gill.”

She seems to come back to herself, a little, at the sound of her name. 

“But I’m not wrong, am I?” she asks. “They’ve got rules about these things for a reason. Look, I’m hardly back a month and it’s already interfering with work.” 

“It’s not. We just have to… figure it out.”

“Figure _what_ out? What is it we think we’re doing, exactly? Sneaking around, keeping secrets – but when do these things ever stay quiet? If it comes out, and it will, that’s it, that’s both our reputations in tatters. You’re sleeping with your DCI… and I promoted you! What’ll people have to say about that, do you think? Nevermind we’re both women.” She leans back into the couch, closing her eyes. 

“Alright, but—”

“It’s my fault. This was stupid. I’ve been stupid.”

“You haven’t.”

Her eyes open. “I have. I’ve been pretending it’s fine and it isn’t. It’s a massive risk. And that’s not even getting into the ethics of it. I’m your _boss_ , Rachel. It would look to anyone, from the outside, like I’m abusing my authority. Using you.”

“Well… who cares what it looks like? You’re not using me.”

She looks at Rachel out of the corner of her eye. “Aren’t I?”

Rachel leans back. “What’s that mean?”

Gill sighs. “Well. You’re a – you’re a very beautiful, very – well. It’s kept my mind off… it’s kept me busy, this. But it’s not right. That doesn’t make it right. And it isn’t fair to you.”

“Okay,” Rachel says slowly. “I know there are rules, but – well, sod the bloody rules.”

Gill nods, closing her eyes again. “Mmm, yes. ‘Sod the rules.’ I’ll be sure to raise that argument at my disciplinary hearing.”

“And I don’t feel used,” Rachel says firmly.

Gill sighs, opens her eyes. She gives Rachel an almost pitying look. “You do this, you know, Rachel. This is something you do.” 

“What is?”

“You make self-destructive decisions.” She’s studying Rachel as she says it, and Rachel knows that look – it’s the same one she has when she’s analysing suspects. An unravelling sort of look.

Rachel scoffs. “I didn’t – this wasn’t – a _decision_. This just _happened_. And anyway, you’ve made the same choices as me.”

“Yes. Well. That’s what worries me.”

Rachel’s jaw tightens. “Oh, I see. I’m so damaged that this must be a massive mistake by definition, hmm? And you’ve just been dragged along into my mess, have ya?”

Gill’s voice is quiet, her eyes steady. “Or you into mine.”

Rachel sighs, shakes her head. The conversation has gotten too far away from her. She grapples for a way back, leans in.

“Listen. Boss. _Gill_. What I said… all I meant was – we just need to figure out how to deal with some things, that’s all.”

“That isn’t what you meant.”

“Yes it—”

“You meant—”

“I know what I _meant_ , Jesus, Gill! Could you let up for _one second_?”

“No, I can’t,” Gill says, and she sits up. “I don’t let up, alright, Rachel? If I push you, it’s because you need pushing. If I yell, it’s because there’s something that deserves yelling about. And if I tell you I’m using you,” she says, looking Rachel in the eye, “it’s because you’re being used.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Something in the set of Gill’s face, the hard look she’s giving Rachel, sets Rachel’s heart pounding. She licks her lips. “Well, maybe I don’t mind being used. By you.”

Gill shakes her head, looking baffled. “See, this is what I mean. _Self-destructive._ I'm not having you on, Rach.”

“But I don’t mind.”

“Well, you ought to.”

“But I’m telling ya,” she says, reaching for Gill’s hand, “I don’t.” 

“Oh, for god’s sake, only you could hear someone say they’re _using you—_ ” Rachel leans in, cuts her off, kisses her quiet.

After a moment, Gill pulls back. “Rachel, I mean it.”

“Mmm,” says Rachel, eyes fixed on Gill’s lips. “So do I.”

Gill takes Rachel’s chin in her hand, forces her to meet her eye. “You just stormed in here, yelling about how this was interfering with work.”

“Did I?” Rachel asks, and leans back in, kissing Gill’s neck. _I can fix this_ , she thinks, and shifts so that she’s straddling Gill. 

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” she says, unbuttoning her shirt. Removing it. “I’m very level-headed.”

“Rachel, come on. We need to talk about this.”

Rachel reaches back and unhooks her bra. She lets it fall to the floor. “So talk.”

“We can’t just – Rachel, we – mmm…” She trails off as Rachel leans forward, slides her hand down, past Gill’s waistband. She inhales sharply as Rachel’s fingers press into her.

“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that last bit, boss,” Rachel says, grinning, leaning away, watching Gill struggle to keep her composure.

But Gill takes Rachel by the wrist. “Stop.”

“Oh – c’mon.” She leans forward, pulling a playful pout, murmuring into Gill’s ear. “I thought you wanted to use me.”

Gill doesn’t speak. After a moment she releases her wrist.

“Shall I keep going?” 

“No.” 

Rachel leans back, looks at her. “Really?”

“Yes, Rachel, _really_.”

“ _Okay_.” She takes a deep breath, removing her hand. “Okay.” 

_Still haven’t met a good thing you couldn’t completely fuck up, have you?_ she thinks, and drops her head, resting it on Gill’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles miserably. She just wants to rewind the evening. Start over.

Gill doesn’t move for a moment, but then she sighs and begins rubbing Rachel’s back. To her mortification, Rachel feels tears pricking at her eyes; the day just won’t relent.

“No, this is my fault,” Gill says. “This was a bad idea from the beginning. I should never have let things get this far.”

Rachel can’t risk a response, grief suddenly thick in her throat.

“We really do need to stop,” Gill continues softly. “I’m sorry.”

“…Rachel?” Gill asks after a long while, but all Rachel can do is nod. “Okay. Okay. You’re alright.”

_For fuck’s sake, Bailey, pull it together_. 

Rachel lifts her head, turning to the side, away from Gill, wiping her eyes. “Sorry,” she says again, then has to clear her throat. “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s fine. Um, I’ll just…” She climbs off of Gill and grabs her shirt off the floor, tugging it on, fastening the buttons in awkward silence. Gill is just staring down at her own hands. “Okay. I guess I’ll – I guess I’ll just go, then.”

Gill doesn’t respond, and so Rachel walks around, gathering her things, every sound magnified in the heavy silence. She’s halfway to the door when Gill speaks.

“Hang on, Rachel.”

She turns around.

“Don’t.” Gill looks up from her hands. “Stay. Please – I’d like you to stay.”

“Yeah, well, you just told me to leave.” 

“I know.”

Rachel crosses her arms. “I thought you said this was a bad idea.”

“It _is_ a bad idea.”

“So…”

Gill sighs. “Will you come sit down so we can talk about it?”

Rachel doesn’t move. “What happened to, ‘this is a massive risk’? And… doing the responsible thing, or whatever?”

“Well, what happened to ‘sod the rules’?”

“Oh, right. And so saying we had to stop was just – what? Punishment because I pissed you off? Some sort of power play?”

“No, of course not.”

“Right.”

“Come and sit down,” Gill says again. When Rachel still doesn’t move, Gill shakes her head. “Do you want to leave?”

Rachel’s lip curls. “Oh, don’t act like it matters what I want.”

“For god’s sake, Rachel – do you think you could _try_ to act like an adult? Just for the length of this conversation?”

She glares at Gill for several seconds before turning on her heel to go.

“ _Rachel_ ,” Gill says sharply, and Rachel spins back around.

“ _What_?” she spits.

“Come here and _sit down._ ”

She hates that even now, the edge Gill’s voice turns her on; she hates that Gill knows it, too.

She’s still scowling, but after a moment she crosses the room. Throws herself down on the settee.

“Thank you,” says Gill, and then sighs. “Look. I’m asking you to stay. Even though it’s a risk. Even though it’s a bad idea.”

“Oh, yeah, keep telling me what a massive mistake it is to be with me,” she says petulantly, and Gill suddenly looks so exasperated that Rachel reaches out and lays a hand on her arm, worried she’s going to get up and leave herself. “Okay,” she says. “Sorry.”

“This _is_ a risk, Rachel.”

“I know.”

“It’s not about you, it’s—”

“I know.”

“Honestly, you are _maddening_ sometimes.”

“Yeah, well, so are you.”

Gill shakes her head, sighing. “Do you even want to keep doing this?”

There’s a part of Rachel that’s still tempted to storm out, see how _Gill_ likes being messed about. But she’s pretty sure that really would mean the end of things between them – and as much as Gill seems to think they’re a catastrophe waiting to happen, Rachel still wants the chance to convince her otherwise.

Also: Gill’s really fucking hot when she’s angry.

“Yeah, I guess,” she says finally.

“Fine,” Gill says. “And do we need to keep fighting or can we just get on with it?”

“Whatever. We can get on with it.”

“Lovely.”

They go quiet. 

“Has anyone ever told you,” Rachel says eventually, “that you’re really sexy when you’re pissed off? Like – _really_ sexy.”

“Oh for god’s – is that – that’s really what you’re saying to me right now?”

“What?” she says. “You’re the one who said we should get on with it.”

Gill shakes her head. “Absolutely maddening.”

“I’m just sayin’, my bra’s already off.”

“Listen – in all seriousness, it really is quite a big risk for you,” Gill says.

“What, not wearing a bra? I’ll take my chances.”

Gill ignores her. “You’re not retiring anytime soon. Your reputation has to last a lot longer than mine.”

“I thought we settled on ‘sod the rules.’”

“I’m saying you probably shouldn’t.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

Gill sighs. “This really is a terrible idea.”

“Oh, come on, boss. I’ve made _much_ worse decisions than this.”

“That’s meant to be comforting, is it?” Gill asks dryly.

“Hey, you’re the one still talkin’,” Rachel says, laughing. “I’m trying to get on with it.”

Gill starts to respond, but Rachel is already leaning in.


	9. Chapter 9

GILL

She wakes in a shit mood. Rachel’s still asleep next to her, curled into a ball, hair like a mad halo, and for a second Gill has to fight the urge to shake her awake and begin shouting. But she isn’t even sure what she’d say: stop being so naïve and ridiculous, before this blows up in both our faces?

They’d been lying in bed, Gill bone-tired after the long day at work, the fight with Rachel, the much more enjoyable making up. They were meant to be sleeping, but Gill noticed that Rachel’s eyes were open, flashing in the dim light. 

“What is it?” she finally asked. And Rachel said, simply, “I love you.” 

It startled Gill so much that she sat up in the dark, and Rachel sat up too. 

“You _love_ me?” 

“Yeah,” she replied, smiling so big it nearly broke Gill’s heart. “I do.”

Gill could barely string a coherent thought together. As always with Rachel, she felt that she should have seen this coming, and as always, she hadn’t. 

“Well… I – okay,” Gill managed to stammer, trying to buy some time, to collect herself.

“Oh,” Rachel said after a moment, when Gill still hadn’t spoken. “You know what, forget it, I shouldn’t’ve—”

“No, it’s… listen, Rachel, it’s just, it’s late, and we both have to be in early—”

“Right, yeah,” Rachel agreed. “Bad timing.” She’d smiled apologetically, her eyes searching Gill’s face. “I’m sort of known for that.” 

_God, give her something._

“I…” Gill began, but she trailed off. She leaned over, kissed Rachel. Looked into her eyes.

_Say something._

“We’ll talk in the morning,” she’d managed finally, and laid back down. A moment later, so did Rachel. Gill spent the next few hours staring at the ceiling, finally falling off just before the alarm sounded.

*****

She’s a mess at work – running on no sleep, yelling at everyone, snapping at Janet, even.

_Jesus. It’s just… immaturity, is what it is. Impulsivity. Which is_ exactly _how we_ _ended up here in the first place._

She doesn’t know why Rachel said it. Maybe she thinks it’s something Gill wanted to hear; maybe she says it to everyone she sleeps with; maybe she even believes it. But it’s… not good.

“I’m really sorry about yesterday,” Rachel says when they run into one another later, and for a second Gill isn’t sure whether she’s talking about screwing up the case, instigating a massive argument, or telling Gill she loves her.

She settles on a response that works no matter what.

“Good. You won’t do it again, then.”


	10. Chapter 10

RACHEL

She shouldn’t have said it. What is _wrong_ with her? Why does she always open her mouth and… let words come out? 

It just happened; it was a moment that got away from her, but she’s not sure how to walk it back, and now Gill’s acting… odd. Wary. She keeps glancing over at Rachel like she’s afraid she might say it again. 

The only solution Rachel can think of is to spend the day being aggressively normal. _Nothing to see here – just working a case. Definitely not shagging my boss. Not the type to make any humiliating middle-of-the-night declarations. Everything’s great, see? Completely fine._

But somewhere in the back of her mind, even as she’s reviewing CCTV footage, even as she’s interviewing Adam Hutchins, she can’t stop thinking about what Gill had said. Before the stupid thing that _she’d_ said – during their argument. Of course, Rachel knows what Gill went through. Well, no one knows _exactly_ what she went through; no one else was in that car with Helen Bartlett. But that day… Rachel’s own heart was in her throat, mind like white noise, the entire world focused, narrowed down to Helen’s drunken voice coming out of a tinny speaker… but she was safe and sound, wasn’t she? Safe and sound and actually able to _do_ something. To try, anyway. Not belted to a seat, trapped and terrified. So she knew Gill didn’t walk away without scars. Gill never talked about it, but still. Rachel knew that much.

But the penny hadn’t dropped until she’d said it aloud – that all of this, between them, was tied into all of… that. She should have known; it was obvious, in retrospect. The thing was, Rachel had been waiting for years for Gill to look at her like that. And so when Gill had held her gaze, when she’d kissed her back, invited her in – it felt real. Felt _right._ Like the culmination of something. She should have understood, though. She should have known that, to Gill, it was something else.

So. 

Now she knows. 

That evening Adam finally caves under questioning, and of course he killed his husband. Another thing she should have known from the start – it’s always the spouse, isn’t it? Always the one who’s supposed to love you.

“Love’s a load of bollocks,” she says over Janet’s protestations. “Adam murdered his husband because he called him tubs, and then he tried to cover it up. He might have been his soulmate, but he still wrung his neck.”

Maybe she shouldn’t care that Gill is using her. She’d tried to laugh it off last night, tried to make it mean something else, but she just couldn’t get the words out of her head. And then she’d sort of… panicked, there in the darkness, blurting out _I love you_ , hoping that if she could just make Gill understand, if she could get her to see, to feel that same feeling of _yes_ , of _finally,_ of _home_ , that Gill might replace _I’m using you_ with _I love you, too_. But of course it hadn’t worked. It just made her look like an idiot.

_Everyone uses everyone. It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t have to matter._

She spends most of the day trying and failing to convince herself – because of course it does matter. Rachel is exceedingly aware of what it means to use someone; she’s not particularly proud of it, but she’s been there, again and again. She knows it’s transactional. It’s fucking mercenary. And whatever it is she thought Gill was doing with her… it wasn’t that.

So yeah. It matters.

She’s so tired, suddenly, the long days and late nights coming to rest deep and heavy in her bones. She’s just so sick of pretending all the time, having to monitor every glance and word and smile, having to be two different people. And for what – to be told that none of it matters? That nothing has been anything like what she thought it was? 

_How does this keep happening_? 

She has built and rebuilt this wall _so many times_. She can’t have ended up here again – wounded, confused, pathetic heart on full display and no idea where she went wrong. She _cannot_ be here again. 

Her head is pounding and she just wants to crawl into bed by the time her shift ends, but she drags herself to see her mother anyway. Janet’s right – she won’t be able to live with herself if she doesn’t at least warn Sharon that she’s living with a violent, woman-hating prick. But in the end it’s a pointless trip, as she knew it would be. Adam killed his husband for calling him fat, Barry Keane’s still beating his wife, and even after being warned away her own mother would rather blame the women Rufus assaulted than face being alone. That, right there, is what love gets you.

Still. “Some of us know when to walk away,” she says, growling the words into her mother’s face. 

And maybe, she thinks, she ought to take her own advice.


	11. Chapter 11

GILL

It hadn’t been the same, nothing had, since that night. Gill knew it was her own fault. She hadn’t responded to Rachel in the moment, and then she’d hoped, somehow, that maybe they could just move on, pretend it hadn’t happened. But Rachel was pulling away. Shut down, like. Turning down every invitation, skipping the pub. She’d even disappeared for most of the networking event Gill had invited her to as a sort of olive branch. Gill had hoped that if Rachel saw that she was serious about helping her – giving her opportunities, not just pushing her, but supporting her as well – maybe then they could find their way back to some sort of equilibrium. But even then, Rachel had gone off as quickly as she could, disappeared to who-knows-where, and Gill had hardly seen her all evening.

Well, it was for the best, ultimately. Because truly – how was it ever meant to end, for them? What was she going to do, introduce Rachel to Sammy? Invite her to move in? 

No. Of course not. It was exactly what it was meant to be: a distraction. A diversion. Idle fun.

It was a thing which had always had an end, and that end had simply arrived. 

So. Decision made. For the best.

But no one could blame her for drinking a bit more, she thought. If they knew, that is, which they didn’t, because what could she say? _I’ve been secretly sleeping with Rachel for months, and now she’s left me_? No, this was – this was just something she would need to get through, on her own, and if the dreams were getting worse, if Helen Bartlett’s voice wouldn’t stop ringing in her ears – _It’s not much fun, is it? Not being in control_ – if she was having trouble concentrating with Rachel right outside her office, popping her head in fifty times a day like nothing was wrong, well – drinking helped with all of it, and no one could blame her. If they knew. Which they didn’t.

What did it matter anyway. It was just a bit of gin. She was fine. 

But it was careless to leave the bottle out on her desk. Stupid, a stupid mistake. Only – she and Rachel were alone in the office, working late, and the space between them was so wide, the silence like an ache in her chest, and she’d just needed to take the edge off. And then Rachel had smiled into her phone – _smiled like that at me, I know that smile_ – and knocked on Gill’s door with some story about leaving to get home to sleep – _ha_ – and Gill couldn’t even bring herself to look up, eyes trained on the file in front of her, conversation trained on the case. And then she’d offered – Rachel’d offered – she’d offered to drive Gill home, and for one second (no, not even that, for just one _millisecond_ ) the world had righted itself. But then of course reality rushed back in to meet her – the pity, the bottle sitting there – and it was like being knocked to the ground. Like Rachel had simply knocked her to the ground. Not an invitation. Just an obligation to her pathetic, pissed boss.

But there was, it turned out, just enough left of Gill’s heart to betray herself. And so she’d agreed. 

By the time she’d gotten into the car she had sobered a bit. Come back to herself a bit. Ready again to pretend that everything was fine. _No – everything_ is _fine_ , she reminded herself. _Decision made, for the best._ So when Rachel asked if she was okay, she didn’t launch into the speech she’d been composing in her mind for weeks. She didn’t plead for answers, or go cold, or lecture, or remonstrate. 

That left her with no plan at all, though, which was always dangerous. And – well, it was because of the gin, obviously. (It had to be the gin. It had to be because she was drunk and overwhelmed at suddenly being so close to Rachel, in her car, breathing in the smell of her, tobacco and coffee, like nothing had changed. The way her hair fell across her shoulders, the way her hands were resting on the steering wheel. That, but mostly the gin.) 

“No, you’ve been up, you’ve been fine,” she’d said, keeping her tone reassuring. “Better than I expected. When Janet said no, I was like, okay Rachel, step up. And you have. It’s worked out better this way.”

It had to be the gin, because if it wasn’t the gin – if she had _meant_ to tell Rachel she’d been second choice for sergeant, if it had been intended as retaliation, as… as a _punishment_ for disappearing – well. She’d be slipping. And Rachel Bailey, of all people, was not going to have the satisfaction.

Gill was _fine_. Or she would be. Soon. 

So it must have been the gin.


	12. Chapter 12

RACHEL

There was only one way to move on from someone, Rachel had well learned over the years, which was to shag someone else as quickly and enthusiastically as possible. There was nothing else for it. And so when Will Pemberton had stopped her on her way out of the investigative techniques refresher course, when he’d complimented her answers – so bloody transparent in his flirting – she’d looked him up and down, thought _, Yeah, alright, he’ll do_ , and taken him home. 

And he was actually a perfect choice, the more she thought about it. That heady bit of power and ambition swirling around him. Busy, not asking too much of her. Up for a bit of snogging here and there – behind Gill’s back, most deliciously – and a lot of mindless fucking. 

But – and this was another thing that Rachel had, unfortunately, learned – nothing good ever lasts, does it? So she was annoyed but not altogether surprised when he’d sprung the question on her one evening. Gill was on the telly, looking serious and stern (and, sod it all, beautiful) and Will, as though it was nothing, asked, “Does Gill know about us yet?”

“No, of course not,” she stammered. “I wouldn’t.”

“Well – you should probably mention it.”

“I don’t think Gill would be remotely interested,” she said, practically diving into her wine glass, hoping he’d let it go.

“That her DS is sleeping with the Detective Super?” 

_Fuck._ She cast around for an excuse. _What would a normal person say?_

“Enough people think I don’t deserve this job already, Will. I’m – I’m really not going to have people thinking I’m throwing myself around upstairs.”

(She registered the irony, but pressed on.) 

“I just think it’s better to keep us between us for now. Whatever… us… is.” 

“Actually,” he began, and it was all she could do not to groan aloud _,_ “it’s better, for me, if it’s out in the open. I don’t like sneaking around.”

_Well you’d better get used to it, hadn’t you, because there’s fuck-all chance I’m bringing this to Gill._

She flashed him her brightest smile. “Well. Maybe I like secrets.”

*****

Thing is, she was losing them, both of them, all at once.

Gill was well and gone, of course, Rachel had done a good job of pushing her away, and they’d settled by necessity into a sort of polite work-related détente. It wasn’t enough. Rachel still craved her approval, craved her respect – just craved her, though she had very carefully walled off that feeling so that she only ever had to glance at it sideways, in the dark, never head-on. Polite was about the best she could manage under the circumstances. 

Just as bad, she was losing Janet. Gill had managed to pull the rug out, letting it slip that Janet had been her first choice for sergeant, and although Rachel wished she was the sort of person who could let that roll off, instead she was immediately seized with jealousy, insecurity, like poison flooding through her. And although Rachel _also_ wished she was the sort of person who could hide those feelings, instead she was punishing Janet. For keeping it from her, yes, but mostly for being better. For having had Gill’s respect. Gill’s _love_. For still having it.

She knew she was being petty. Pulling rank, having her tantrum about Janet going over her head to Gill (nevermind that she’d have done the same thing, and had); she pretended not to see the blokes exchanging looks behind her back as she harped on about the rules, the _proper_ _procedure_. And then following Janet into the toilet – she despised herself, even as she was doing it, but the white-hot coal in the centre of her chest wouldn’t let her stop. “This is only going to work, with us, if we follow protocol,” she’d spat, then stomped off without accepting Janet’s apology.

But she still had Will. “You’re furious about being asked to be sergeant second, when you need to be already thinking about your next rank,” he’d said.

_Too fucking right_ , she thought.

She could do this. She could do this without them. She just needed a way to climb out of this hole she’d found herself in. Get a bit of her power back. She’d given away too much to Gill. Way too much. And she was losing the plot with Janet, too, wasting time with this petty bollocks. It was beneath her.

She could do this. Just had to get a bit of power back was all.


	13. Chapter 13

GILL

Alright, well, so, the news was out, and Janet was livid, but as there was no un-ringing that particular bell Gill really just needed them all to move on. Would she have told Rachel the truth if she’d been clearheaded, thinking more than five minutes ahead? Of course not. But what’s done is done.

“You’re the only one getting upset about all this,” she’d told Janet.

“Because you asked me to keep it a secret, and then you go and tell her, so I look the two-face! Which means saying sorry, which means I did something wrong, and I haven’t. She’s gonna have this for all it’s worth.”

“She won’t take it personally,” Gill insisted.

Janet’s face went incredulous. “Are you _new_?”

Well. Fair enough.

And alright, Gill probably wasn’t helping matters by getting Janet and Rachel in a room together and casually referring to Janet as the team’s top interviewer, knowing how it would rankle. And yes, it was possible she didn’t _need_ to instruct Rachel to accompany Janet as, essentially, a glorified assistant. But she was exhausted, tired of wanting Rachel, tired of missing her, tired of having to see her face every day. And their current case – a dead child, awful enough without the excruciating pressure from above to get it right – none of it was helping.

One drink in the morning. Another in the afternoon – maybe two, on a bad day. Just enough to move past the memory of Helen’s voice, of Rachel’s skin. Just enough to step back into herself.

She’s fine.

And she _stays_ fine. Even after she spots Will Pemberton trail Rachel behind the building, at a clip, as though they’d planned to meet there, which of course – the realization crashing over her all at once – they almost certainly had. Even after Will stops her in the hallway with his air of practised indifference, his too-nonchalant, ‘ _Gill, did you get my email about DS Bailey?”_ confirming her suspicions – _oh they’re just so sodding clever, aren’t they?_ Even then.

“Oh, yes! She’ll do well. Nice of you to take an interest,” she replied sweetly.

_I’ve made her come so hard she couldn’t walk the next day, but yes, it’s very nice of you to take an interest._

She pushes through the doors, grateful to get outside. She just needs a break. Just one day without blood. One night of sleep without waking in terror, Helen Bartlett’s belt around her throat, voice ringing in her ears.

_“Wow… This is what it feels like._ ”

Each day just keeps coming, one after the next, and there’s no slowing any of it down. Each day is more death, people lying to one another, turning on one another, hurting one another. A child, today, for god’s sake. A _baby_. And each day there’s Rachel, standing in the same spot but impossibly far away. Everything just keeps happening, no matter what she does.

She searches the backseat, the boot, under the car, her grim ritual.

She climbs in and checks that no one is watching. Ducks her head and pours the gin down her throat.

There. The warmth spreading through her. Breath coming easier. Muscles relaxing.

There, now. She thumbs away the tears impatiently.

See? She’s alright. She’s fine.

_This is what it feels like_ , says Helen’s voice in her head, and she takes a long breath, pushes herself out of the car, and walks over the road to the pub.


	14. Chapter 14

RACHEL

“Have you heard from HR about my placement?” Rachel says it casually, over wine, while the lads are distracted. Will had told her he’d sent the email, that her application for the Vice initiative had been accepted; Gill should have said something by now. Gill narrows her eyes, like she’s been waiting to be asked.

“Question or statement?” she demands.

Rachel really should have known then, where this was going. “Question.”

“My turn. Are you shagging Will Pemberton?”

_Ah, fuck._ She takes a breath, buying time. “…Who said that?”

“You just did, when you didn’t say no.” Gill looks at her like she’s a stranger. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

_Oh really, Gill? Did you?_

“We’re not doing anything—”

“Anything wrong?” Gill interrupts.

_Anything I haven’t done with you_ , is what she’d wanted to say, but Gill’s still talking. “We’ve had to live through all your past relationships, chapter and verse – Rachel Bailey, the human _Heat_ magazine – and now suddenly you’ve gone all coy? You must think you’re doing something wrong, or else you wouldn’t be trying to hide it.”

She’s stunned. Not that she would’ve expected Gill to be supportive, obviously, but this – the vitriol, shaming her – this was new.

“And don’t take me for a mug,” Gill snaps. “’Have I heard from HR about your placement?’ – I _really_ don’t like that.”

She shouldn’t have to justify herself, but she can’t help it. “It doesn’t affect my job.”

Gill scoffs. “You already know things you shouldn’t before me. Doesn’t affect your job? Where’s it going to stop? I do something you don’t like, you have a little pillow talk, get me sorted?”

Rachel protests, fury like smoke curling in her chest as Gill rants on. _What pisses you off more, Gill – that I’m fucking someone else, or that his rank is higher than yours?_ But she doesn’t trust herself not to go completely spare if she starts down that road, not in the pub, a few drinks in, the others liable to walk up any minute.

“How long’s it been going on?” Gill presses. “Because I’m starting to question recent history. ‘Were Rachel and Will together when we all met at that function? Were they laughing behind my back?’”

“No,” Rachel says unconvincingly, so that to both of them it sounds like _yes_.

“When you went up for sergeant?”

“ _No_.” _Jesus, Gill_.

“How do I know that? How does anyone know that? How will they? If you’re not a straight, white bloke, Rachel, there’ll always be questions about why you got something and they didn’t. And the first thing that springs to mind is, you must be shagging someone, and you are.”

_Which is fine as long as it’s you, yeah?_ It wasn’t enough, was it, that Rachel had humiliated herself by telling Gill she loved her and getting exactly sod all back. It wasn’t enough that she and Janet had kept from her that she was only promoted because Janet had turned it down – letting her strut about like an idiot, thinking she’d been seen, been _chosen_. No, now Gill was going to make her sit through this, too, this vindictive, completely hypocritical lecture, knowing full well that Rachel can’t respond – not the way she wants, not in public, not when it could cost her job to be seen shouting in her DCI’s face that _all this concern for my reputation wasn’t quite top of mind when it was you I was fucking every night, was it?_

“I don’t care,” she says, working hard to keep her voice steady. “I know the truth.”

“Good for you,” snaps Gill. “If you really don’t care, then great, brilliant. You’re a better man than I am.”

_Yeah, well, no bloody argument there,_ Rachel thinks, before snatching up her things and stalking out.


	15. Chapter 15

GILL

It’s almost a relief when Rachel starts pounding on her door at half past eleven. Gill knows that what she’d said in the pub earlier was – well, it may not have struck the well-intentioned tone she should have, perhaps, been aiming for. Not one of her better moments, possibly. And she knew there’d be some sort of fallout, because… it was Rachel. So when the pounding on her door started, there was a part of Gill that was frankly just pleased to be getting on with it. Have it done, then to bed for another sleepless night.

Rachel starts in the moment Gill has the door open. “What you said back there was – rubbish, it was complete – it was fucking hypocritical _shit_ , Gill.”

“Evening, Rachel.”

It seemed the kid could barely get the words out, she was so infuriated. “ _Lecturing_ me – like you have any right to – like you have any bloody standing to criticize – to say anything at _all_ about who I’m shagging. You are – you are – there is something wrong with your wiring, I mean it, Gill, there is really something wrong with you.”

Gill gives a tired nod. “Alright then. Feel better?”

“Oh, don’t condescend to me, you mad bitch.”

“Rachel—” 

“Admit it, it was a shit thing to say.”

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“And you are a _massive_ hypocrite.”

“Rachel."

“You _are_.”

“Fine.”

“ _Fine_.” Rachel glares at her for a moment, then turns to leave, and Gill’s stomach gives a little lurch. This keeps happening: she’s miserable in Rachel’s presence, but she can’t bear for her to leave. It’s a bruise she can’t stop pressing. 

“I wasn’t wrong, though, was I,” Gill says to her back, and Rachel spins on her heel.

“ _Jesus_ , you just can’t stop yourself, can ya?” 

“Well, you and I kept things quiet, didn’t we, but you two are hardly trying,” she says. “He’s certainly high enough on the food chain that it won’t hurt him. But you need to think hard about whether it’s a good look for you, Rachel, you really do.”

“Oh, this is your concern for my career, is it?”

“I am concerned for your career.”

“No, Gill, you’re concerned with _punishing_ me because I found someone else to _fuck_!“

“Lower your voice.”

“And it’s the most _pathetic_ , _jealous_ —”

“I said _lower your voice_ , Rachel.”

They glare at one another.

“I’m not doing this here,” Gill says steadily. “You can come inside and we can talk – without shouting – or you can go.”

Rachel doesn’t move for a moment, seemingly torn between a theatrical storm-off and the chance to continue unleashing her wrath.

“Fine,” she finally mutters, and, scowling, pushes past Gill into the house. 

_Wrath it is. Lovely._

Gill follows her inside. Rachel throws herself onto the settee, crosses her arms. 

“Can I get you something to drink?” Gill asks, trying to stay polite, to inject some semblance of level-headedness into the conversation.

“Why? Think I’ll fuck you if I’m drunk?” Rachel asks nastily.

“You’re already drunk.”

“Yeah, well, at least I wait ‘til after work.”

Gill gives her a hard look. “If there’s something you want to say then let’s have it. Otherwise you can go.”

Rachel sits there, arms crossed, legs crossed, one foot jiggling. She makes an angry noise and leans forward, elbows on her knees, pressing her palms to her face. When she looks up again, Gill is surprised to see her eyes are damp. 

“Fine,” Rachel says. “I’ll have wine. _Please_.”

Gill pours two glasses, hands one to Rachel, such a familiar gesture between them now. But then she moves to stand across the room, keeping well away. They linger in a tense silence, neither of them drinking; Rachel is leaned back, staring up at the ceiling.

The quiet is unbearable. _Just have done with it._

“Fine. I’m sorry for what I said,” Gill says. “You’re right, it wasn’t on.” Rachel doesn’t respond, gives no indication that she’s even listening, but Gill presses ahead.

“It’s just – well it’s one thing, isn’t it, sleeping with your boss in secret. Not a good look for either of us, I admit, especially me, but there you are. It’s another thing, though, shagging your boss’s boss’s boss, out in the open. You don’t want to take my advice on this, fair enough, but I am genuinely concerned for your career.”

“Oh and that’s just your unbiased opinion, is it?” Rachel snarls at the ceiling.

“For god’s sake, Rachel, what do you want me to say? Do you want to hear that I’m jealous? Of course I’m jealous. Do you want me to say that I miss you? That I’m unhappy? Fine: I do, I am. That doesn’t make me wrong about this.”

Rachel doesn’t meet her eye, but her lips begin to tremble, nostrils flaring. Gill sighs.

“Hey, come on. You’re okay, kid.”

“Don’t call me that.” 

“Don’t—”

“Don’t be _nice_ to me.” Rachel sits up. “I don’t want – just – stop. I don’t want to forgive you.”

“Rachel _._ ”

Rachel stares down at the glass she’s holding, hands trembling, and Gill is struck by how young she seems, suddenly.

“You know, I never told anyone I loved them before. I mean – I’ve said it back to people who told it to me.”

_Shit_. “Oh – Rachel, let’s not—”

“But I never said it first.”

“We’ve both had too much to drink…”

Rachel lifts her head.

“Did you really not love me, then?”

Her voice is so plaintive, her face so desolate, that Gill nearly moves, nearly crosses the space between them to kiss her. She has to clear her throat before she can continue. 

“What does it matter, now?”

_Just say it._

_Why can’t you just say it?_

Rachel chews on her lower lip, staring at Gill. “I don’t love Will,” she says finally. “And I didn’t love Sean, nor Nick, the bastard, nor any of them. I thought I did, some of ‘em, but I didn’t.” 

Gill can’t bring herself to speak.

Rachel stands, suddenly, swaying a bit, and sets down her glass. “I shouldn’t be here. This is stupid, I shouldn’t’ve come—”

She’s making for the door and Gill says, “Wait, Rachel—” but Rachel shrugs her off, plunges through the doorway, slamming it behind her.

_Don’t._

Gill follows her outside. “Rachel, stop. Rachel Bailey, stop this instant,” she says sharply.

Rachel swings round. “We’re not at _work_. I can go if I like, I don’t have to take orders from you.”

“I mean it. Come back inside. Please.”

“Piss off.” Rachel turns away.

Gill casts around for some way to slow her down. “I’ll call and – I’ll have you arrested for drunk and disorderly. Don’t think I won’t.”

Rachel throws up her middle finger without turning around. Keeps walking.

“I’ll pull your transfer to Vice,” she calls, and this really does get Rachel to stop.

Gill expects her to erupt. To yell, to embarrass her in front of the neighbours. ‘How dare you’ and all that. But instead, when Rachel turns around, Gill can see by the glow of the street light that she’s crying.

And she doesn’t yell. In fact, she says it quietly, her voice cracking. Like pleading.

“Just let me _go_ , Gill.”

Gill stands on her stoop, framed by the doorway, watching Rachel walk away, willing herself to form the only words that would make her stay. Trying to push them past the choking sensation in her throat, the feeling as though Helen Bartlett’s belt had never loosened. 

She stands there, mute, until Rachel turns the corner and disappears from view. 


	16. Chapter 16

RACHEL

Rachel wakes, head throbbing, eyes red and raw, bile rising in her throat. She just manages to make it to the toilet before she’s sick. Janet’s words echo miserably in her memory – _Just not on an empty stomach, Rach!_ – and she avoids her reflection in the mirror as she splashes water on her face. She doesn’t remember much from the night before, but there are flashes: storming out after Gill’s obnoxious lecture; drinking more – a _lot_ more – at a pub up the road; then something else, shouting, somewhere familiar, quieter after the noise of the pub, and then the realization like a jolt through her body – _ohhhh, fuck me, did I go to her bloody_ house?

Lovely. Brilliant. Yet another graceful step on the winding road to her complete humiliation.

Thankfully, she has the day off, and she spends it alone, nursing her hangover, shades drawn, flipping aimlessly from channel to channel and trying not to imagine what she might have said or done at Gill’s. 

She’s not even sat down at her desk the next morning when her phone rings, Her Majesty summoning her to a scene. _Perfect_. It’s grisly as usual, but actually Gill seems… fine. Somewhat distant, maybe, but generally normal. Not acting, in any case, like Rachel had shown up on her doorstep completely pissed, hurling insults and abuse, or – worse.

_Maybe I’ve dreamt it. Please let me have dreamt it._

She’s off her game all day, flustered, trying her best to appear calm and capable and to interact with Gill as little as possible. It feels never-ending and she’s dead on her feet by evening, but she’d cancelled on Will the night before so she downs another coffee, chucks some Berocca in a bottle, and makes her way to his. It’s the fourth or fifth dinner he’s insisted on making for her over the last few weeks, and if she’s being honest, it’s all starting to feel a bit… much. Will was meant to be a temporary distraction, someone to take her mind off things. All the cooking and the – well, at first she’d been pleased, even excited at the idea of going with him to the award ceremony. _We’re coming out, Will and I – I even bought a frock_ , she’d said to Janet, like some daft schoolgirl. So wrapped up in the idea that she was _moving on_. Of course, it was never meant to go anywhere, but _he_ didn’t know that, did he? And somehow it had just been easier to… go along. 

She’s just so tired.

She shouldn’t care what Gill had said at the pub. The entire point of this whole endeavour was, in fact, to stop giving a rat’s arse what Gill said or thought or did anymore, wasn’t it? But suddenly the thought of attending the ceremony, smiling, pretending to be normal, pretending to be happy, prancing about arm-in-arm with Will in her stupid red dress – ignoring the looks and the judgments, everyone assuming she was shagging her way to the top, bad enough – but beyond all that, standing there like a twat, clapping politely from across the room as Gill received a commendation for surviving the very worst day of her life – well. It suddenly strikes her with absolute certainty that there is nothing on earth that could get her into that room. Not on Will’s arm. 

Only… she understands, too, what that means. As she looks at Will over the dinner he’s prepared for her, she’s already playing out exactly how the next few days will go, the well-worn script she knows by heart. She’ll pull back, go silent without warning. Bail on him at the last minute. Big row, fireworks. She’ll play the victim and take the high ground. Storm out spitting insults. And then it’ll be over.

And she’s right – that’s exactly how it happens. A transparent excuse for missing the ceremony; a half-assed apology the next day. Then showing up late, too late, to his flat, like nothing was wrong, like she hadn’t already lit the fuse, like the explosion wasn’t imminent. Playing the greatest hits: “The job comes first.” “I’ve said I’m sorry.” “Can we just move on?” Then the yelling, the proper fight. He calls her a teenager; she calls him a dirty old man. Door slams. And done.

_For the best_ , she thinks later that night, alone in her own bed. She’s not a frocks-and-fêtes kind of girl; she’s not sure why she thought she could be. She’s a… meet you at half past twelve, fuck you in the dark, gather her things and sneak out before the sunrise kind of girl. 

Gill’s voice echoes in her head. _You do this, you know. You make self-destructive decisions._

She rolls over. Punches her pillow.

_Fuck off. I’m trying to sleep._


	17. Chapter 17

GILL

There hasn’t been a moment that Gill’s lungs haven’t ached, since that day with Helen Bartlett. Not a second that her throat hasn’t burned. It’s all still there, coiled inside her body, deep in her muscles. Waiting.

_Just let me_ go _, Gill_.

If only all of this with Rachel hadn’t happened right after all of that, then maybe… but no, of course that’s the only time it _could_ have happened. Any other day – week – month – year – and Gill never would have allowed it; she wouldn’t have been searching for a co-conspirator in burning her life to the ground.

_(Someone is coming with me – and that someone is you. I’m taking you with me.)_

It’s her own weakness that’s been the problem from the start. Her own mind letting her down. She lost her focus, let Helen Bartlett into her car. Lost her focus, let Rachel Bailey into her bed. Weak. _Stupid_.

And of course the kid is hurt. Of course she’s angry. Gill dragged her into this, opened a door that should have stayed closed, invited her in, then turned her back. _Did you really not love me?_ she’d asked in that small, heartbreaking voice, and if Gill had been paying any kind of attention at all, it wouldn’t have caught her by surprise. She knew how Rachel felt about her, had seen the way the kid’s eyes had followed her around the room for years; it was a matter of time before she crossed the line, and Gill was supposed to stop it. She was meant to stop it.

_(We’ve been through this; you’re missing the point. The damage has been done.)_

She’s been skating by on gin and luck, lately – but there’s nothing for this. Because she knows, down to her core, in her marrow, that she just can’t live up to the words. She can hardly stand to look at _Sammy_ , for god’s sake, her own child. What Rachel’s asking of her, something… real, something true, gentle, her chest cracking open – how can she offer that? To anyone, ever again? She can’t believe there was ever a time she was arrogant enough to think she could.

Still, there has to be something she can do; she owes Rachel _something_. The limit of what she can give, the very edge. _I’m not driving into the sea_ – but maybe she can manage to act… whole. She can give her that, can’t she? Can be the person Rachel actually needs. Untouchable. The one who can hold the line, who can ignore her own wanting.

_(I wanted to stay.)_

Yes. She can do, in the end, what she should have done in the beginning, and let her go.

_(I wanted to stay here. Forever.)_


	18. Chapter 18

RACHEL

It’s been days, and she still can’t sleep.

She’d gone to Will’s office earlier that evening. It was Janet’s doing, her and her ridiculous enduring belief that Rachel could always be better than she is.

“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself!” she’d snapped when Rachel had pulled a bit of a pout, feeling lonely. “You should have gone to Will’s award – you said you would. Having him in your life’s been good for you, and you’re going to throw that away over a dress, or Gill, or whatever…”

Well, yeah, that’s exactly what she was going to throw it away over, but leave it to Janet to make her want to at least _try_ to be better. So when she saw Will’s office light on, late, she went up. Not to try and reconcile; the thing had run its course, obviously. But she knew she owed him more. An apology, a conversation. Like an adult. She could give him that much, at least, after the way she’d treated him. _Transactional_. _Fucking mercenary._

“I’ve been beating myself up,” she said to him. “I should have gone with you.”

“Yeah.”

“I was an idiot, Will.”

“Yeah, you were,” he agreed. And then he’d looked so… sad. “But I’ve been thinking, Rachel, and I’ve decided that life’s too short, at my age, to convince someone to stick around.”

She’d thought: _Do I look that sad, when I look at Gill?_

“You don’t have to convince me. I want to stick around.” A kind lie; the least she could do was let him feel like this was his choice.

“Yeah, I know. But… it’s not working for me, Rachel.”

(And then – she was surprised at how much it hurt, after all. Why does no one ever talk about how much it hurts, letting people go, even when it’s right?)

She lays there in the dark, smoking fag after fag, trying to untangle it all.

“Don’t you have to give thirty days notice before you retire?” It had taken all her courage to ask Gill the question.

“Why? Can’t wait to be shut of me?”

“No. No, the opposite,” she’d said. “I’m worried about what’s gonna happen when you go. To be sergeant without you.”

It was as close as she could get to, _I miss you._ As close as she dared to, _Don’t go_.

She’s really not sure what to think about the gin. She’d been wanting to bring it up with Janet for weeks, but it felt risky to mention. Thing is, Gill had been coping, hadn’t she, for months after Helen Bartlett; it wasn’t until things had gone wrong between the two of them that she’d started drinking at work, as far as Rachel could tell. So the guilt had twisted in her stomach, keeping her quiet – but finally she’d relented. “Do you think we need to be mentioning this to somebody?” she’d asked Janet.

“Well, hopefully she’ll go before it comes to that.”

She didn’t seem to be going anywhere, though. And that – it felt good; it felt bad. The usual.

It comes to her at 5am – well, she always has done some of her best work fueled by self-recrimination and heartbreak. She forces herself out of bed, gets to the gym early, finds the gun that killed Tam and Patricia Robbinson right where her gut said it would be.

Gill arrives on the scene, buzzing the way she always is after a break like this – talking too fast, putting all the pieces together, filling in the blanks. But there’s something else, too, Rachel notices. It’s like something has… shifted, between them. She can’t pinpoint the what or why of it, but something has changed. A bit of their old ease is back.

“Oh, by the way,” Gill says, stopping Rachel by her car. “When I do put myself out to pasture – which I will, when I’m ready, which is not yet – I personally think you’ll be fine without me. You’ll know what to do. And in the meantime we can keep going over things, if you like. I’ll keep you under my wing, yeah?”

“Yeah. I’d like that boss,” she says, and then takes her first full breath in months.

That night, she sleeps.


	19. Chapter 19

GILL

Her last body: head bashed in, wedged between boulders like an animal that’d dragged itself off to die, wind blustering over the moors, Rachel at her side.

She’s trying to do right by her. To be good to her, to let her go. Inching back toward what they had been, before they’d learned enough about one another to cause lasting damage. Carefully avoiding the memories: skin, breath, warm sleep, waking light. There’s so much she can’t think about these days that it feels as though her mind has no place to land, her thoughts glancing off one another, glittering, quick. But she’s trying. And she’s trying to feel her way back to herself, too. She knows that the old Gill must still be there – has moments, even, where she can manage a passable impersonation of who she once was: sharp and capable, a force to be reckoned with. But so much of the time she feels like she’s standing just behind herself, looking over her own shoulder. Watching everything happen from somewhere behind her eyes. 

She knows the drinking isn’t helping. It’s not out of control, she has it under control, but she’s aware it’s making it harder to keep her feet under her. Metaphorically, obviously; really she’s fine. Well, yes, she’s been snappish sometimes at work, in those moments when the pressure and exhaustion start collecting like shadows in her peripheral vision. But it’s nothing another drink can’t stave off, and besides, she’s not being unreasonable, is she? She’s retiring in a _month_ , so – Christ, she just needs them to – if everyone would just do their fucking jobs, if they didn’t all need to be led around by the hands like children, that would be excellent. She’s spent half her career building up this Syndicate, and suddenly it seems like the moment she leaves it’s all going to fall apart. Lucky for the criminals, eh?

And then Julie stops by, with her ridiculously transparent, “How are you? Yeah, but – _how are you_?” So one of them had said something, clearly, Janet or Rachel – probably both of them, in on it together, the twits. Because of course that’s exactly what she needs right now, the two of them running off to Julie and telling her god-knows-what histrionic story they’ve dreamed up.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she repeats. “I’d be a damn sight better if this lot would take some bloody initiative now and then, but it’s coming along. We’ll have it done before my thirty days.” A reminder to Julie: she’s nearly gone, it’s nearly over. This doesn’t have to be an issue if she doesn’t make it one.

Julie doesn’t seem convinced, exactly, but after a few more minutes of small talk she seems to be satisfied at least that Gill isn’t a complete mess, isn’t slurring her words and toppling over at her desk. As she leaves, Gill catches Rachel and Janet exchange a guilty glance, and she shakes her head, irritated. _Twits._

*****

It’s the next day everything goes to shit.

There’s a lot on: a roadblock, risk assessments for a rural house-to-house canvass, a witness who was able to ID their victim as Mike Greenholme. Things are moving along at a clip – and then her phone rings. Rachel’s voice is trembling, and Gill can hear the hiss of her cigarette burning as she inhales.

_Something’s happened_ , is what she says. She goes on, things about a farm, a man called Pritchard driving off, Janet and Chris giving chase, a road accident.

“They think he’s dead,” she says, then pauses. “He _is_ dead.”

_Shit._ Gill’s suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to lay her head down on her desk, to head home and crawl into bed for the rest of the day, but experience takes over and she goes all business instead. “Put that cigarette out, now,” she snaps. “You’re on duty. Tell Pete to do the same.”

“He’s… he’s not smoking,” Rachel says, the liar. 

“Did you risk-assess that farm?”

Rachel takes a deep breath. “Not quite.”

_What?_ “Why the _hell_ not?”

“I did a background check,” she says, her voice turning defensive, panicky. “I just – I wanted to act as quickly as possible.”

“Look where that’s landed us!” Gill’s on her feet now, gathering her things; this is only going to get worse.

She’s halfway to the farm when Rachel calls again with an update – all information she’d have already _known_ if she’d done a bloody risk assessment _as instructed_ , but no, Rachel Bailey can’t be arsed to follow protocol, can she, not when there’s something rash and reckless she could do instead. It’s _every fucking time_ with her, and Gill’s so fed up, suddenly, that she can’t stand to hear another word out of Rachel’s mouth. She hangs up on her. Throws the phone across the car. 

_Feel better after that little tantrum?_ she asks herself. And to be fair, she does.

*****

So much for having the case wrapped up with a nice little bow before she retires. The Pritchards, it turns out, were keeping – well, slaves. In their barn. Dressed the same as the murdered Mike Greenholme. So Julie’s back, as suddenly they’re looking at something big, much bigger than your run-of-the-mill homicide.

Gill calls Janet into her office. She’s looking shattered, on the verge of tears since the road accident, and for some reason Gill finds this all the more infuriating. She expects this sort of thing from Rachel, the impulsivity and recklessness – but Janet? Janet’s meant to be the responsible one. The fact that she went along with Rachel’s ill-considered plan, that she’s lost her driving privileges, that she’s being investigated by Traffic _and_ Professional Standards, that the entire syndicate is under scrutiny, that she won’t be able to conduct the interview with Mrs Pritchard, that a man _died_ – well, she can save her tears. Gill isn’t interested.

“And while we’re on the subject of bloody aggravating things,” she says, “don’t go running to people, telling them you’re worried about me!”

Shattered or no, Janet doesn’t shy away from an argument, Gill will give her that. “I _tried_ to talk to you,” she counters, “and I asked you how you were getting on with counselling—” 

“And I said it was rubbish, which it is.”

“—and you said that you’d stopped going, and I said that I’d found counselling very helpful after I got stabbed—”

“He was an idiot, he talked touchy-feely rubbish—”

“—but because you weren’t receptive to that, and because you’re behaviour’s been erratic, and because I’ve been aware of you drinking more lately, and at work, and because I’ve known you for over twenty years, and I _don’t_ think you’re fine—”

“She rang me,” Julie interrupts, “and I don’t think you’re fine either.”

_Oh, for heaven’s sake._ She’s not entirely sure how to explain it to them without getting into… everything, but she does her best. 

“I know exactly what’s up with me. I can’t make decisions – I can, but not like I used to. It’s a confidence thing. I doubt myself. I have a drink, I don’t doubt myself. It works. And if you think I’m going to give anyone the satisfaction of falling to pieces five minutes before I retire, or after, or _ever_ , you don’t know me.”

Julie shakes her head, exasperated. “Don’t be daft, of course we do. Which is why you need to put your spikes in and _listen_ and stop being such a _stubborn cow_!”

_Well, that’s just – it’s… well. Fine._ “Point taken.”

She’s still feeling fairly humbled when Rachel stops by her office later. “I shouldn’t have put the phone down on you,” she tells her. “Totally unprofessional. Ridiculous.”

“I should have risk-assessed the farm,” Rachel replies, and Gill shrugs. Truthfully, a risk assessment wouldn’t have changed anything; she was just too angry before to admit it.

“My mum died today,” Rachel says then, out of nowhere. And Gill stares at her, blinking, as every feeling she’s been suppressing, every desire she’s been sublimating for months floods to the surface. 

“You’re kidding,” she says, instead of saying, _Oh, god, Rachel, come here._

“No. This morning. Heart attack.”

“Rachel, I’m so sorry,” she says, instead of pulling her in. “Listen – go. You’re entitled to compassionate leave. Death of a close relative.”

“None of that really applies.”

“No, well…”

“I… well, I would like to see my sister.”

“Go! Go, go,” she says, hurrying Rachel out before she says any of the thousand things threatening to come out of her mouth.

The memory comes unbidden: the night they’d fought, the night Rachel had cried. She’d sent her mother away that day. _Told her I never wanted to see her again_ , she’d said, and left Gill’s shirt damp with tears.

_Don’t. She’s got Will now_. _She doesn’t need you_ , Gill reminds herself, deliberately twisting the words into her heart. It’s enough to stop her chasing Rachel down the hall, anyway.

She closes her eyes and thinks about the bottle in the bottom drawer of her desk. _Don’t_ , thinks again. But she already knows she will.


	20. Chapter 20

RACHEL

Rachel’s dealt with a lot of scum over the years, but Evie Pritchard’s managed to get under her skin in a way not many have. 

Oh, she can handle the insults, the sad little attempts to embarrass her, that’s no problem. “Scrawny cow”? Please. “Bet you haven’t had a jump in years; who’d want it?” she crows, and Rachel just thinks, _Oh, Mrs Pritchard, the stories I could tell._ She’s not even all that bothered when the woman runs up behind her outside the Magistrate’s, pushing her, screaming her head off about having Rachel arrested. It’s not great, obviously – but absolutely worth it when Gill throws herself between them yelling, “Get your hands off my officer!” Not a bad morning, that.

What’s got Rachel truly angry is Evie coming after Gill. Janet’s got hold of some video where she’s ranting and raving, accusing Gill of stinking of booze, and not since her Nick Savage days has Rachel actually, genuinely, wanted to hurt someone this badly. The video sends waves through the entire syndicate – Gill calls in sick, Dodson’s doubting the investigation, Janet’s panicking, and this is probably the worst possible time Rachel could have chosen to clear out her mother’s stuff from Rufus’ house, but she’s certainly not rescheduling with that arsehole. _Thirty minutes_ , she promises herself. _In and out_.

The place is a total dump, filth everywhere. She’s not even sure what she’s doing there; what, is she meant to hang onto her mum’s old bras and half-empty tubes of lipstick for sentimental reasons? It’s not like Sharon hadn’t left her plenty already. A gaping crater in the middle of her childhood, for example; hazy memories of carousing and chaos before she’d abandoned them with a mean drunk and an empty cupboard and not much else. What kind of person do you have to be, to do that? Rachel couldn’t bear it at the time; she had waited and waited and _waited_ for her mum to come back. Always one eye on the door, hoping it would open, until finally Alison had told her to stop being an idiot. “Just try not to think about her, okay? Believe me – wherever she is, she isn’t thinking about us.”

And this is what she’d left them for, in the end. To live like an animal in a ratty little nest, latching onto whatever unsavoury creep she’d scrounged up this month, drinking herself stupid, hogging every microphone, desperate to wring any bit of pleasure she could out of her miserable, small, sad, seedy life.

_She was a tiny little thing, when they laid her out,_ Alison had said. 

_Stop it. Absolutely not. You are not bloody crying here._

Rufus wanders in, bleary-eyed and swaying, and the moment passes, Rachel’s grief immediately eclipsed by a skin-crawling disgust. Time to go.

“Would you mind if I asked you a favour, sweetheart?” he asks, holding up a hand to stop her leaving.

_Oh, for fuck’s sake_. “I’m not giving you money.”

“It’s only fair,” he counters in a tone he probably thinks is reasonable. “I looked after her – and she wasn’t easy. I looked after your mummy so you wouldn’t have to.”

“No,” she says, and it’s not sadness, not even contempt she’s feeling suddenly. It’s fury. “What _you_ did is you got her to the lowest point she’d ever got in her life. She shouldn’t have ended up like this. She could… sing, she could’ve sung. What have you ever done, hmm? Inherited a house and drank in it. I wouldn’t give you the shit off my shoe.”

His punch knocks the wind from her lungs, but she doesn’t hesitate. She strikes back with all of her rage, channelling something inside her, something fierce and violent and ruthless. She grew up in a house with a mean drunk, carousing and chaos, fending for herself, armour like only a child can grow and _what, does he really think that Sharon Bailey’s daughter can’t take a punch? Does he think I won’t give as good as I get?_ He falls to the ground, curls up in the fetal position, and she kicks him, hard. _Some people like completely feral_ , she thinks as she kicks again, and again, something snapping inside of her, curling her lips, baring her teeth.

“That’s for every woman you’ve ever put in hospital,” she growls. Aims for his kidneys, for his face. “Scumbag.”

He lays there, panting and shaking, and she closes her eyes, running her fingers through her hair, savouring the feel of her pounding heart. 

After all that’s happened, everything she’s been through, she can feel it now: something has burned away. She is standing, centred and steadfast. Her hands are steady.

_I can fix this, all of it. I can fix it._

“Don’t you dare show your face at the funeral,” she snarls before walking away. She feels like her footfalls could shake the earth.

***** 

“Who’s seen Evie Pritchard’s little film? I’m assuming everyone.”

The day Janet had been stabbed, Rachel fell apart. She could barely lift a cigarette to her lips she was shaking so badly, adrenaline coursing through her, babbling and sobbing like an idiot. She’d asked Gill about it, later. 

“If I hadn’t have been there, you’d have done everything I did,” Gill said to her. “You had the luxury of falling apart because you knew I wouldn’t.”

Rachel looks out at everyone around the table. Gill’s team. And hers. “The reason that we all wanted to work on this syndicate is because of Gill’s reputation. You don’t get a reputation like that for nothing. It’s slogged for. It’s thirty years of being good at the job. So it’s up to us to protect it, because we’re the people that know her. So, if anybody asks ya about DCI Murray stinkin’ of booze, don’t play. Just say, ‘No, it’s rubbish,’ and shut it down.”

Later that day, they pull a body and a shotgun out of Evie Pritchard’s septic tank. Rachel oversees it with a grim sort of relief. She still can’t get Gill on the phone, but she leaves her a message, explaining everything. 

“Boss, can you ring me?” she says finally. “I need you.” If that doesn’t get a call back, she isn’t sure what will.


	21. Chapter 21

GILL

She’s been ignoring everyone. The absolute _shame_ of it, to fall apart like this on her way out. Being home alone isn’t good for her, but she can’t bear the thought of showing her face at work, everyone staring at her, or worse, not meeting her eye. No – home. Bed, where she can pretend for a while that none of this exists.

But eventually the incessant buzzing of her phone drives her to her feet, if for no other reason than to turn the bloody thing off. She’s missed more than twenty calls, twelve of them from Rachel, and several texts as well, the last of which reads, “left u VM - found body on farm. PLZ ring me.” Gill plays the message. _Boss. I need you_.

She can’t. She crawls back into bed. 

Burrows down. Closes her eyes.

And then she sighs, throws the blankets off herself, and reaches for the phone.

*****

Janet and Rachel meet her at the coffee shop, and then Janet gives her a lift home. She’s not back five minutes when there’s a knock at the door; Rachel must have followed behind and waited for Janet to drive off.

“Hi, boss,” she says, and Gill wonders if there’ll ever come a day when that grin doesn’t stop her heart, just for a moment.

“Hiya, kid.”

Neither of them speaks then, but for the first time in a long time the quiet isn’t uncomfortable. Standing in the same space together is finally starting to feel almost normal again.

Gill isn’t sure when, or why, but something about Rachel has changed. She’d noticed it right away at the coffee shop. She’d been lecturing them, Rachel and Janet both, making them swear not to lie for her about the drinking, and Rachel had pushed back, surprise, surprise. But the way she spoke, the way she held herself – Gill almost didn’t recognize her. She was steady, deliberate. In command. Something of her old turbulence, her wild recklessness, had… settled, somehow. 

Which is why it doesn’t feel like impulsivity when she steps forward, slowly lifts Gill’s chin, and kisses her.

It’s nothing like that first kiss in the shadows by the pub. Nothing like any kiss they’ve had since. It’s the sort of kiss that asks nothing, wants nothing, needs nothing from either of them. Rachel’s thumb traces her jawline, and Gill breathes her in, and they stay that way, close, connected, like they were always meant to fit together exactly this way. _Reverent_ is the word that flutters through Gill’s mind.

She could live the rest of her life in this kiss.

After a while, though, they pull apart; Gill steps back, clearing her throat. “Well.”

Rachel’s running her fingers across her lips. She glances up. “I missed that.”

“So did I.”

She wants to say more, but she can’t find words for the things she wants to tell her, the things she wishes she could explain. And maybe Rachel can’t either, because they lapse into silence again.

“I’m leaving for London soon,” Rachel says eventually.

“I know.”

“And… Will and I split up.”

“Janet mentioned.” When she doesn’t say anything else, Gill smiles and shakes her head. “Rachel, I’m not asking you in.”

“Who said anything about coming in?”

Gill gives her a knowing look.

“Hey, if I wanted to come in, I’d be in,” she says, laughing, and Gill’s suddenly reminded of that first night she’d shown up on her doorstep, grinning and licking her lips. _Thought you might want… company._

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. I’d just…” She leans in then, lips brushing Gill’s cheek, breath hot in her ear, and moans, low and quiet.

_Fuck_ , Gill thinks. _That would work._

“That wouldn’t work,” she says.

Rachel leans back, grinning. “Would so.”

It’s been a long time since she’s seen Rachel like this, lighthearted and flirty. She really had missed it.

“I guess you’d better not do it, then.”

“Guess not.”

“So what _are_ you doing here?”

Rachel hesitates. “I dunno,” she says finally. “You’re really retiring?”

Gill takes a deep breath. “Yes, well. If they’ll let me.”

“I still don’t know how to do any of this without you.”

“Oh, you do. You’ll figure it out, you always have.”

This isn’t the reassurance she’s here for, Gill understands now. 

“Everything’s just…weird,” Rachel says. “I’m going to London, you’re retiring. My mum’s dead.”

“I know, Rachel, I’m so sorry.”

“No, I don’t mean – it’s fine,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s all just… different.”

Gill nods. “Well, different isn’t always bad. London will be good. It’ll be great for your career. Just… keep your focus.”

“Don’t start shaggin’ my boss, you mean?” she replies, smiling.

Gill laughs. “Among other things, yes.”

“What about you? What’re you gonna do now you’re retiring?”

She shrugs. “Oh, the things people do, I suppose. Everything I’ve been putting off until I had the time.”

“It just feels a bit…” Rachel swallows. “I don’t know. It feels a bit like I’m never going to see you again.” 

“Oh. Well, you have my number,” Gill says. “And you know where I live. Obviously.”

Rachel laughs. “Yeah, if I’m ever allowed inside your house again.”

“Well. You’ve always got that little moaning trick in your back pocket.” Rachel starts to lean forward again, grinning, but Gill puts a hand out to stop her. “I was—”

“I know, I know.”

They stare at one another for what feels like a very long time. Finally Rachel says, “Alright. Well, I guess I’ll…”

“Yeah. Okay,” Gill says. “Night, Rachel.”

“Night, boss.”


	22. Chapter 22

RACHEL

It’s Gill’s retirement do, and for this, Rachel knows, for Gill, she would have worn her red frock. Wouldn’t even have minded any comments. Not a bit.

Everyone’s laughing and shouting as Janet’s giving her little speech, and Rachel’s managed to inch her way through the crowd to stand next to Gill. She’s trying to enjoy herself, cackling along with everyone as Janet goes on about meeting Gill for the first time dressed head-to-toe in leather (a mental image Rachel files away for later), and trying to avoid the looming thought that everything after tonight will be inescapably, irreparably different.

And then Gill leans over, in the middle of the commotion, and speaks into her ear.

“I am _so_ proud of you.”

It takes Rachel a moment to process the words, and then she’s nearly overwhelmed. Something between a sob and wild laughter rises up in her throat; she can feel her face contort, and she looks down, blinking back tears, trying to get hold of herself. Trying, as ever, to remain upright in Gill’s presence.

And this is the moment, finally, that she thinks she understands. She understands what it is that Gill can and cannot give her. What they can and cannot give to one another. She understands what it means, those words, from Gill.

_I am so proud of you._

She wants more – of course she does, she’s Rachel sodding Bailey, she will _always_ want more. _Can’t take the Bailey out of the Rachel_. But this can be enough, she thinks, can’t it? Yes – she can allow this to be enough. 

Not the words she wanted. Not enough to quell the ache in her chest, or to satisfy the longing that’s lived in her bones for as long as she can remember. Not enough words in the world for that, maybe.

But she remembers lying with Gill in the quiet, exhausted and happy. The feel of Gill running her fingers through her hair. She remembers the sound of her heartbeat; the sound of her anger; the sound of her breath in the night. 

And she understands, now, that this is what it sounds like, sometimes.

_I am_ so _proud of you._

Breath and quiet and laughter and sleep, and this, too, she sees at last, is love: standing close in a crowded room, leaning in, voice soft in her ear. 

Not fireworks. Not promises or manipulation. Not forever. Just this, just here. A murmur above the din.

It sounds like _yes_. It sounds like _finally_. 

It sounds, for a moment, like _home_.


End file.
